character saturday: jungle explorer

Did I need to redesign a character I legitimately forgot to make for the longest time? No. But I looked at her and went "what the hell was I thinking?", so I started fucking around with new ideas. And since there really aren't any ears that are perfectly suited for what I want, I threw up my hands, went "fuck it" and put her in a hat.

Had I ever referenced her wearing a hat before? No. Am I ever actually going to sit down and play her ever again? Also no. But it made sense, given the location she lives and works in.

And is everyone probably going to get their second, third, fourth or in some cases thirty-second makeover when the new face customiser drops sometime soon? Yes. So look forward to that or whatever.

Anyway...

Pea and ham soup this week... and by ham I mean kransky. And did I completely fuck up my process and have to extract all the piece of kransky from the soup pot because I put it in when I shouldn't have? Yes. Am I asking a lot of questions and then answering them this week? Also yes.

I attempted a second recipe from the Baking Yesteryear cookbook this week. And... is it possible that the finished product was always going to be bad? Maybe. Is it possible that I used a different kind of sugar and then forgot two other ingredients so the end result was never going to work? I mean, it's more than possible, that's literally what happened.

On the plus side, the pastry was fantastic (which I did not make), and I want to use it and my new little pie tin to make a real apple pie very soon. So that's a bonus.

But I think I came to a realisation I've kind of had in the back of my head for a while. I'm an excellent cook. I'm a shit-house baker. I mean, of anything other than bread. And in situations where the recipe relies on very specific ingredients in order to resemble the thing it's supposed to resemble.

Because baking is about precision much more than cooking. And there are recipes that absolutely don't care that much and there are other recipes that absolutely care. I seem to have come across two of those recipes in this book thus far. Which is fine. I'm just more fully aware of it than I perhaps have been in a hot minute.

Thursday Night DnD was pretty good actually. And the pay off for last week's Bad Brain Day was actually getting to say all the things I thought about saying after last weeks game. In character to an NPC. Because it all needed saying. And kind of changed to vector of what we were intending to do.

Granted we also discovered right after that that there were at least three other locations we could have gone for the same information, including, weirdly enough, our own innkeepers. But I feel like it was more important for my character to have his moment than for us to go see NPC B and get the information from them.

But mostly we did one of those sessions where nothing much gets done, but we all enjoyed ourselves and will remember it fondly. Which I think we needed in character after what they've been through of late.

Friday Night DnD was... board games. Mr was otherwise absent, so Fluffy, Mrs and I did Board Game Night instead.

Which basically resulted in us doing a lot of chat, playing some games of Sushi Go and Love Letter while continuing to talk rubbish. Which did mostly centre around Mrs and I remembering places that no longer exist on O'Connell Street. And terrible 90's boy bands.

So an enjoyable evening all around.

Anyway.

Today was basically the supermarket. Did I also buy normal white sugar, which I haven't purchased in... I dunno... 15 years? Yes. Yes I did. Because, if baking wants white sugar... well, what the hell.

character saturday: pick a card

You want to know what's dumb? And I think I've said this before... but I don't even really want to PLAY a warlock. I just really, really dig all the things you can do with one.

And this is also what happens when your DM makes a comment about the level of sass in your PCs. So you think to yourself... "can I make a non-sass character?". The answer is clearly yes. But also, why the hell would I want to.

It did however lead me to thinking about a character who is... pointed in a different direction than my Thursday Night character. Mostly... what if you want from a character who was deeply involved with the gods to a character who the gods were actively not interested in. Or that your former character's god would disapprove of. And then I got into the idea of a fortune teller who the Goddess of Fate disliked, and the Goddess of Luck was ambivalent about. Which then led me to flavouring a component pouch for spellcasting as a deck of tarot/divination cards.

Also, someone who had been dead, stopped being dead for some reason unknown to even herself, but had no memory of who she had been beyond waking up clutching those cards.

That's before we even get into the Shadow Sorcerer/Undead Warlock of it all. And that potentially her Warlock Form of Dread isn't just physical, what if it's that "The Others" take over. Others... Other... not completely sure. It might also be that that's the thing that's keeping her alive and giving her her powers rather than a fully external patron. A vengeful ghost took over a freshly dead body, reviving up the woman inside in the process and comes when it's called to wreak revenge on the living. Maybe?

Madame Fortuna is only her stage name, obviously, but the name she remembers is Lila.

The whole concept has been through a bunch of variations through the week to be honest.

Anyway...

Yep, this is a three parter. But mostly just the art, not so much the story. Also, am I obsessed with this purple/grey skin tone? Yes, yes I am.

This week was Not Really Minestrone Minestrone soup. And pretty good, but then that always is. If I do say so myself. And I do.

Thursday Night DnD was... thinking about it... not much of anything. Also, very, very, very much one of those sessions where I really wish we were a group of 4 instead of a group of 6. Because sometimes I just cannot.

As I've said before, there are times when your brain can't separate D&D memories and emotions from Real World memories and emotions because you're taking your brain to the same place regardless of whether it's imaginary or not.

So I had a Bad Brain Day on Friday.

Which was also Chiro Day... so there was the ritual Saying Things To My Chiro which helped a little. And the usual Wandering Around Looking At Things.

But then we called off Friday Night DnD due to sick smallperson, so I just let my brain do it's own thing, ate too much good bread and caught up on videos that had been cluttering up my Watch Later list.

Anyway...

To round it out... an action pose. Which is technically a slightly modified body from the last shot, but I'd been fucking around and ended up here and really liked it, so I just went with it. You can see that the belt pouch is kinda sorta a skull motif here too. But the earring kind of blends into the shoulder.

Today was supermarket.

And not even that much supermarket to be perfectly honest. I mean, it took the regular amount, but we didn't buy a ton of stuff. That happens sometimes and I have no idea why really.

Beyond that we didn't really have anything we wanted to do, given the last couple of weeks, so we just called it early.

character saturday: speak softly and...

So... this week's DnD Character Colouring Book was supposed to be something else... then it was going to be a different random sketch... and then I decided I hated that one. And I went back to this, which is really just me messing around with the new staff designs.

Also, the fact that I want to play a redhead.

Let's not think about it too much.

Anyway.

This week was Halfling Everything Soup week. And what I like about that recipe is that, it does indeed, work with just about everything. I stuck mostly to the recipe this week... although I added celery, because why wouldn't you add celery.

I have a new neighbour... after, what... six months? Eight months? Not sure. She seems fine. Time will tell.

Thursday Night DnD was... stuff. But we're now in a radically different location, but no longer in a horrible temple to evil gods. So, good times.

Friday Night DnD didn't happen. So Fluffy and I did movies instead.

Firstly we did the Puss in Boots sequel. I'm not doing a review for it... it was perfectly serviceable. Bits of it are very lovely. The flipping between different animation speeds at certain points kept throwing me out of the moment. Not everything needs to try to be Into the Spiderverse.

And the plot is incredibly by the numbers. Which doesn't make it bad. I think it's actually the best movie in the Shrek movie universe after the original Shrek.

Anyway.

Today we did the supermarket thing. And then we did a run down to IKEA in order to get a pie dish. We bought more than just a pie dish. But, you know, nothing really of substance. For me anyway. I did buy more candles. Because candles.

Yeah, that's what you get this week... words are not my strong point today.

character saturday: professing professor

Today's DnD Character Colouring Book proves the adage... sometimes you gotta get weird with it. Is that an adage? Probably not. It should be.

I was thinking about clerics and thinking about Dragonborn. And my general problem with making Dragonborn in Hero Forge is that it's hard to make the kind of Dragonborn I like, where they actually look similar to their respective dragon types.

But I was thinking about Chromatic Dragonborn, the ones "descended" from the "bad" kinds of dragons. Your reds, your blacks, your blues, etc. And I was thinking about a cleric, but then you get into the whole "good god for a Dragonborn who isn't automatically the one good god of Dragonborn".

So I wandered off to sorcerer. As I am want to do.

And if I'm going for the cleric vibe, it has to be Divine Soul Sorcerer. But if I wanted to make a Red Dragonborn, where does that leave me. Because if they were pulling their power from the Good Dragon God, then their outfit probably needs to be blue. But they're red, so it just clashes.

Then I thought, what happens if they were getting their magic from the bloodline of the Bad Dragon Goddess, but otherwise had no affection or affiliation for her. And then, based mostly on the outfit, I thought Sage was a good background... and I saw one of the options in "what kind of sage were you?" was "discredited academic" and it all kind of fell into place.

Add in my favourite city in all of Faerun, Silverymoon, and we have Professor Jhar, former instructor at Arkhen's Invocatorium, part of the Conclave (University) of Silverymoon. I'm slightly fuzzy on why he's now discredited, but still, that's something that would get ironed out depending on when and where I played him, if that were to ever happen.

But I do enjoy this design very much.

Anyway.

Halfling Tomato Soup this week. Which almost didn't happen when my can opener decided that it just wasn't feeling it when I came to open the big cans of tomato needed for said soup. I got there in the end, but there was a small element of panic for a moment or two.

It all worked out fine though.

Thursday Night DnD was essentially chaos. Not least of all because we were playing in a different location. The upside of said location is that there was a baby for me to hold/cuddle/send to sleep for about half the night. But also, the Traumatise Other Player plan was kind of a fizzer. Mostly because Other Player wasn't... I dunno... in the mood I guess.

So instead I dashed away from the rest of the group and almost got incredibly murdered.

And when the person who is usually the Chaos Goblin in that group was the one to tell my character off about running off on their own... which is such delicious irony that I can't even.

Friday Night DnD was essentially one long battle. So... you know... fine.

Anyway.

Today was Supermarket. Obviously. And then the seemingly simple task of "Buy pie plate". Do you think I could find a pie plate anywhere? I could not.

And that was after looking in Big W, Kmart and Coles. Well, to be fair. I found a glass pie plate. But I don't want a glass pie plate.

Of course five seconds on Google tells me that they have a $2.50 pie plate and a $10 pie plate. So, that'll be next week. Maybe.

We did also look for toy trucks for small person birthday, so that was something different.

character saturday: big foundling boy

There are times when you make a whole character, invent a backstory, really get your head around who they are. And then WotC drop a new background from a new book, which isn't out officially for another week or so. And you reconfigure the whole character to suit the background. Including changing their height, name and subclass.

Wouldn't be the first time.

The original idea came from a single new skin colour in Hero Forge and was briefly a Shadow Touched Shadow Sorcerer before becoming a Guild Artisan Shadow Sorcerer. But I just liked the idea of the Giant Foundling, not least of all because "giant foundlings growing abnormally large for their species". And I do enjoy either a very tall or very short PC, in fact I often find it hard making mid or average sized characters. For the record, he's about 7'5".

Granted I want to pair it with the Rune Carver feat and not the melee focused one it comes with. At least for this character. And yes, I've already played a Storm Sorcerer (also realising that the image should say Storm Sorcerer and not Storm Magic Sorcerer, but, m'eh, amounts to about the same thing), but it fits in nicely with this version of the character.

And I just discovered there's a type of storm giant who gets so old that they essentially end up becoming a sentient living storm... so that's his backstory covered.

I'm going backwards and forwards on the bandaged arm honestly. It made more sense when he was a Shadow Sorcerer because it was going to be a skeletal arm. Because Shadowfell. Less so for this version.

I feel like he might need a whole general once over if he actually does become my Friday backup character. It's also weird that any time I try to make him someone with a normal skin and hair colour, it just looks wrong and I don't really know why. It does mesh nicely with the whole "giant foundlings absorb some of the primeval magic that resonates from giants" aspect of the Giant Foundling though.

But I want to see the full text of the Foundling (and the Rune Carver feat) before I finalise young Issy.

Anyway.

This week was potato and bacon soup... pretty good, but it's hard to go too far wrong on potatoes and bacon, no matter what you do with them really.

This week did also not involved me cleaning everything to within an inch of it's life or running around like a crazy person, so that was good.

Thursday Night DnD was called off on account of a missing player given that we were in the middle of something, see also last week's "stab stab stabbity stab" reference.

Friday I made my first item from the Baking Yesteryear book, Dream Bars. Not perfect, but tasty.

Friday Night DnD was good, but we didn't get very far honestly. We also didn't play until past midnight either, so, you win some you lose some.

Anyway.

Today felt something like old times, but also, somehow more frustrating at the same time.

We did the supermarket thing, but then Ma wanted to look around in town for a new mug to replace one that broke, which you wouldn't think would be a huge issue because... well... it's a mug, how hard can it be? Turns out, harder than you would expect.

Partly because we possibly missed all the stuff they were selling during the mid year sales which ended last weekend. But also because I don't know how much Ma was actually paying attention to things, or perhaps she was just making snap judgements on things without really looking at them.

Also, it's been a hot minute since we've gone into town on a Saturday. I don't really remember us having done it for quite a while. Maybe even for longer than I've been in this apartment, I don't know off the top of my head. But they're "testing out" payless parking payments in the spot we always used to park in The Old Days. Which is just annoying. Doubly so because they've put Saturday parking up to $5, which isn't all that much, but also, isn't the $2 it used to be for a piece of road with some lines painted on it.

But we did a wander around Myer and found basically nothing, poked our heads into a couple of other places, then went to David Jones where we just weren't finding anything. So I pulled a trick I haven't needed to pull in a while and went and found someone who worked there to basically ask "what the fuck is up with mugs?". Turns out that was a good plan, because she was one of those Salt of the Earth Women of a Certain Age women, who immediately pointed out that they no longer have a "mugs" section because brands are fussy little bitches and have to keep all their stuff separated, even if that makes life harder for the consumer when all you want is a mug and you have to look in 85 different places to see the mugs. My words, not hers.

She was lovely though, even if there wasn't all that much she could really do to help us find things beyond pointing in various directions.

It did mean that Ma actually started to pay attention (so god bless you SotEWoaCA lady) and we found a mug she really liked, and that if it turns out that it doesn't work for her, I don't hate, because it will probably end up in my cupboard. Or, I'll just be spiteful and make her use it when she comes here.

I also picked up what they are calling a "noodle bowl" in the same style (which is basically "hand finished" and vaguely dalmatian spots). And when we got to the register, turned out they were both 30% off, so got them both for about $4 less than sticker price each. Noice.

We then spent about eleventy-seven hours looking at artisanal earrings in one of those stores that have a lot of things by a lot of different individual artists/craftspeople. And even though Ma owns like 900 different earrings, she wanted something in particular/different. Which took a while to tease out, but we got there eventually.

We also stopped by Haighs for some Freckles, which I then totally forgot about when we got back and I left mine in the David Jones bag that went home with Ma. Bugger.

character saturday: call him mister flint

So... sometimes you just do a throwaway thing and then you stop and think... wait, is this something? This was the situation I found myself in for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book. I was half fucking around with the (yet even more) new swords that dropped this week and the weird rock people race that appeared a couple of weeks back, thinking about some kind of Fighter.

And I just slapped an existing costume on the model and looked at the dumb, dumb, dumb hat on that head... and it became a character.

I also love the idea of taking something that would otherwise absolutely be a gunslinger of some sort, and turn it into a sword and board fighter. And originally I'd picked out a normal shield, but then I saw the busted up one. Now, firstly, I wish there was a "clean" version of that shield, because I really like the wood texture, but secondly, I love the idea that it's still a fully functional shield, but at some point some random monster took a bite out of it. Which, honestly, tells you a lot about Flint as a character.

And yes, while he's a "samurai", it's less about him being a fantasy version of a historical Japanese military nobility, and more the description on the subclass... 

The Samurai is a fighter who draws on an implacable fighting spirit to overcome enemies. A samurai’s resolve is nearly unbreakable, and the enemies in a samurai’s path have two choices: yield or die fighting.

Yeah, story checks out. And that very much syncs up with both an Earth Genasi and an Urban Bounty Hunter.

Will Mr Flint (and yes, I think he's probably Mr Flint, but the sword kinda protruded over where they would otherwise appear) ever see the light of day? Would I give him a makeover if he did? Who can say. I mean, I can, I can say... and probably no to the first and probably yes to the second.

Anyway.

This week's soup was one of those tomato, chicken and rice deals... and, honestly, I very good version. I added a touch of cayenne pepper which added a really nice warmth to it.

Also, I had my rental inspection on Tuesday, so I did half the cleaning on Sunday and then did the full vacuum/mop/wipe down everything not nailed down clean on Monday. And as such, it didn't consume the entire day like it used to when I did it all at once.

Fast forward to Tuesday... and after checking everything was good to go about 400 times, I toddled off around 1pm to do a bunch of other things and generally Not Be Here.

That involved... [deep breath]...

• Driving to Burnside Library to drop books off
• Leaving the car there and walking over to Burside Village
• Having The Feelings about the place I used to go All The Time
• Getting a pie from the Village Bakery, which is The Best
• Walking down to the bus stop I always used to use and catching the bus into the city
• Picking up my preorder copy of B Dylan Hollis' cookbook, Baking Yesteryear from Dymocks (woo)
• Catching the bus back to the library
• Reading my book for about three quarters of an hour and picking up a book that was on the No Holds list
• Coming home four hours later to a very clean and inspected apartment

And I say it every single time, but the very best feeling in all the world is coming home to a thoroughly cleaned apartment that has already been inspected and you can just enjoy.

Unsurprisingly I let my body recuperate after all the bending and stretching and doing of things.

Thursday Night DnD was... a lot. Which is what happens when your character has the personality trait "I must know the answer to every secret, no door remains unopened in my presence" when confronted with what is clearly a secret door with a very disturbing phrase scrawled on it about basically being fine with your own death and abandon all hope ye who enter here and such... and basically meant that my character and another character were disappeared off elsewhere and the rest of the party had to work through the "are they dead, are they alive, what do we do" trauma.

Then, when we finally managed to reunite after having to play basically two different games for a while, half the party were sent insane and started attacking the rest of the party. Well... half the party went insane... two thirds of the rest passed their save... and... I hadn't stepped into the space that triggered the effect yet.

Until the very end of the game, when, in order to distract another member of the party from trying to do a murder on the last remaining crazy person, I stepped into the room. And we ended the game there, at my request, before I rolled my save. Because I am, in fact, literal Satan.

But I rolled the save last night when DM Fluffy arrived at my place. And I rolled... a 4. So, look forward to next week when the rogue with the magic item that lets him turn invisible fucks up the barbarian who hasn't gotten around to raging yet.

Or. Stab, stab, stabitty stab.

And I get to be evil to the player who will absolutely be the most "traumatised" by it. So, you know, good times.

Thursday was also the six year anniversary of the first game I played with the original three Thursday boys, which very much makes me go both "how has it been so long?" and also "it's literally been five minutes".

Friday Night DnD is what happens when Mr Grumpants McSecret-haver fails an Insight check against my Bird Boy who "always wants to know how things work and what makes people tick" after someone from his past who clearly Knew Things and also Was Dumb showed up... and the party basically keeps splitting up and doing it's own thing, leading to me being able to discover A Big Secret. 

I mean, I basically have a name for Mrs Grumpypants. And while the character doesn't know yet, Fluffy, the player in question, hates Everything About It... which is, in fact, giving me life. See aforementioned literal Satan.

Also, my current Really Dumb Idea is that that sword that has a name and that he won't let out of his sight, won't let other people touch, literally sleeps while cuddling... is Mrs Grumpypants. Somehow. I mean, I'm also sure that it literally isn't (it's much more likely that his wife just GAVE him the sword or something pedestrian... but that's the fucking boring option). But I just want to record the idea here so that later when I'm proved correct I can be smug about it. Which definitely won't happen. But should.

Anyway.

Today was foggy.

No, literally. I got up, took a shower, opened the blinds in the living room and went "huh, guess the shower fogged up the windows... also, the bedroom windows and the kitchen windows... wait... what?". Only to look out the bathroom window, which was open, to discover, no, just actual fog.

So that was exciting. For a limited understanding of the word exciting. Given that we rarely get mist or fog or similar.

And honestly, it was more lazy rain than it was fog. Basically rain that couldn't be bothered falling all the way to the ground. But it lasted all the way from when I got out the shower to after we finished at the supermarket, but disappeared shortly afterwards. Although it hung out up in the hills a while longer.

We did the supermarket thing. And after not really deciding to do anything else, changed out minds and did a brief trip to Spotlight for Looking At Things.

character saturday: 18th blogiversary realness

Happy Blogiversary to me! Tuesday was my 18th Blogiversary to be exact. So, yes, my blog is now 18 years old and can buy alcohol, gamble, vote and get an intimate piercing... then take a picture of it and send it to someone.

Yeah, that slightly got away from me.

But still, I've been banging away at this thing for the same length of time as an actual adult person. Scary that. Even if it is mostly just a once a week update and random DnD characters these days.

Speaking of same.

After last week I realised that other than my couple of wizard characters, I don't tend to fuck around with potential wizard designs, because it's not really my preferred arcane class, sorcerer all the way baby. So I started considering potential wizards for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book.

And although they lean into it less in 5e, a Gnomish Illusionist was a staple of previous editions. Also, I do love me a bitch who is extra. So that's how we ended up with Glim Glittergem (because nothing says extra like alliterative names) and his blue furred rabbit familiar, Horcusporcus, or Horcy for short. In a perfect world he might be wearing a top hat, but all the Hero Forge top hats are a little too goofy looking.

Anyway.

For some reason I've had a brain fart the last two weeks and ended up making soup that was a little too thin. But then it was pea and ham, so it was generally okay anyway.

Thursday Night DnD was... weird but good. Mostly weird because everyone was really timid about going into Obvious Bad Place... and I have the traits "I must know the answer to every secret, no door remains unopened in my presence" and "I care about the truth above all else, even if it doesn’t benefit anyone"... so, good times.

Also when you basically invent perfectly reasonable backstory in the moment based on things that happen. Although we also had to fight a fight we basically could have avoided because everyone else wanted to go right and I wanted to keep going left. Granted one of the players also got a cool magic item out of it, so not terrible.

I also just realised that given the magic item we found at the end of the last game which my character kept, he's now a big old nerd in glasses. Which I kind of dig.

Friday was also Chiro Day, which was good, because I was sorely in need of an adjustment, no pun intended.

Friday Night DnD definitely didn't go according to how I thought it would. But it was still good. It was a late night though, we left at 1am, and I didn't probably get to sleep until around 2am. And then woke up at 6. So, I'm gunna crash out super early tonight I think.

Anyway.

For the aforementioned reason, we didn't do anything beyond shopping today.

movies: elemental

Well, Elemental is...solidly middle of the road. It's not the worst Pixar movie by any means, but it is both very on the nose at times and conversely it did make me tear up by the end.

I will say, that I went into this movie knowing NOTHING. Beyond the fact that it was called Elemental and it was about elemental people. That's it.

It's essentially the first Pixar "rom-com". And I only put that in quotes because it's not the kind of dumb comedy rom-com that seems to exist currently, it's more of a romance with some comedy but also, you know, drama and stakes.

Weirdly, I would have put money on somebody associated with the writing or directing of this movie being second generation Middle Eastern or something similar, because the flame folks in this movie are SO incredibly Middle-Eastern-immigrant coded (down to the music, and a lot of the design in the fire part of town) that it's ridiculous. But, no, turns out it's at least partially based on director Peter Sohn's life as the son of Korean immigrants.

Interestingly, the water people are definitely Caucasian-coded. And we don't see enough of the air/cloud people or the earth/tree/grass people to draw a parallel.

I will say though, that the overall story isn't the greatest. It feels like it keeps picking new plot cards, playing with them for a short amount of time before throwing them away and picking a completely different card and going in another direction. It also feels like it introduces a main character trait at the mid point of the movie when it's never really been explored (I mean, kind of, but not in the way that makes it clear from the jump). Most of it gets paid off, but it's a little all over the place. Essentially, the script could have definitely done with maybe one more draft with a fresh pair of eyes.

I also maintain one of the same things I said after the abysmal Strange World, Disney, can you maybe pay for some therapy for your creators? They clearly have ongoing parental issues. I mean, I know what this story is going for, a story that while not "universal" is something that a lot of people can understand, but at the same time... issues.

And does this movie somewhat copy Zootopia's homework, less from a plot standpoint, but more from a design aesthetic? Absolutely. But that's going to happen when you set a movie in a fantastical city with design elements that lean into a world with a specific theme.

There are also a lot of design choices here that I love. I love the "formal" clothing for the flame folk that is essentially stained glass. I love that the fire people have legs that come to a point at the bottom, because of course flame spreads out as it rises. I love that there is no one look for the earth people. They're basically "dirt plus plants" in some combination, but they range from people with trees growing out of their heads to covered in grass and everything in between. At the same time, it's hard to do creatures made of air, and their shorthand was "cloud", but that's just water vapour, which essentially just makes them a different race of water folk.

As is expected, the effects of the fire and water and cloud are beautiful, there's a whole underwater section that is stunning, but that's only to be expected from a Pixar movie.

Would I have expected that I would get teary at the end based on even the midway point of the movie? No. But they still got me there, which I count as a success.

yani's rating: 3 sparklers out of 5

character saturday: silver lady

So this is why I like to do my research when it comes to DnD Character Colouring Book. Which mostly means digging into things from old editions, because for whatever reason, 5e is hideously allergic to providing actual information about the way various races might live or worship their gods or whatever, for reasons that I really don't understand.

In any case, I was just playing around with half of an idea for a female dwarf paladin and went to look at the Dwarven pantheon just to see what interesting god or goddess she might worship, and found one I hadn't really explored before, Berronar Truesilver, goddess of home, healing, marriage and dwarven home life. And is also the wife of the main dwarven god.

And back in 3e they would put out these books about the gods that included how the church was organised and also if they had "affiliated orders", which mostly covers knights and the like. Which is where I found a mention of the Berronar's Valkyries, who were female warriors who would observe battles from a distance and swoop in if dwarven warriors where being overrun or if a dwarf was too badly hurt to withdraw. I'll be honest, the overall feel of it was good and slightly sexist all at the same time, but I like the idea, so tweaked it to the idea of Truesilver Valkyries, who wade into the battle with the other warriors, but they act as field medics, protectors and rallying the other warriors. And seek both their own glory and to inspire glory in others.

I also love the idea of these warriors in armour that just shines on the battlefield, and in this instance, the disadvantage on stealth from heavy armour is because it catches the light constantly rather than because it makes noise. And that her cloth garments would be made of some kind of cloth of gold, but, you know, cloth of silver. Which seems like something dwarves would be into making. The very subtle inlay of the goddess's symbol on the weave of the cloth (which barely shows up in the image) also amuses me. Likewise having the symbol embossed very discreetly on the shield boss rather than splashed across the whole shield. Originally I was going to go for horns on the helmet, but I like the silver wings on either side.

Anyway.

I made up a mostly vegetable soup this week but sliced up a stick of pepperoni and added that in, so the whole thing had a bit of a spicy kick to it, which wasn't bad at all.

There was no Thursday Night DnD this week, surprising nobody.

Friday Night DnD was more talking... and then the plot kicked in in ways that I did not see coming. But then you don't really expect a wizard's tower on a cloud to show up and the cloud giant wizard just lay out the entire plot in the least elegant way ever. So there's that.

We were interrupted about half way through though by a very surprising instance of the two cats who are usual the chillest babies ever fully going at each other in ways that shocked everyone. So, basically, pause for cat drama.

Anyway.

We did the supermarket thing this morning, surprising nobody.

Then we went to the movies (more on that later).

character saturday: hello lover

Let's call this week's DnD Character Colouring Book, the answer to a question nobody asked. But rather, knowing a certain player and the character they're currently playing, what's a character that would get under the skin (not necessarily in a negative way) of that player AND that character.

Also, it's trying to embody the vibe of "she's going step on your neck and you'll enjoy it" in a character.

The weird thing is that I make a lot of different warlock characters, but I'm not really that excited about the actual mechanics of the warlock. They are one of the most interesting classes to build a character around though. The Genie Patron is one that I either want to basically make Aladdin or lean into the elemental heritage for, hence the Air Genasi. Also, I just like Genasi.

If this was a character who actually saw table-time, I think the dress may be turned into either tartan fabric or potentially I'd mess around with the colours to see if I could get a vaguely velvet look out of it.

The stupid thing with characters I think about as back-up characters is that I always know what their "entrance line" would be... it never ends up happening, but it gives me a way into thinking about the character I guess. In Blast's case... "Hello lover". 

Anyway...

This week has been about three and a half months long.

In keeping with the overall theme of the week, which is "nothing ever works out like it should", this week's soup was probably the worst version of chowder I've made in a while. I mean it was tasty, it was just too thin. Thankfully a little cornflour generally fixes that problem.

Sunday night I had to do a banking thing, which should have been easy and something that took an extra 12 seconds to complete. Turns out no, because fuck me I guess. So that turned into my dumb ass standing on the doorstep of the bank when they opened at 9:30am on Monday morning and getting the problem fixed (why the problem occurred in the first place, nobody fucking knows), and then trying to access the banking on my phone with the shitty reception in the bank. What felt like 900 years but was probably 5 actual minutes later, everything was fixed. But still... I slept like crap on Sunday night, because I kept thinking about the issue that needed to be fixed.

Moving along.

After Chiro Day the other week, I'd been getting some weird cold sensations in my legs and put off going to see my chiro because surely it would improve over the week. It didn't really. So once I got back from the bank I called and managed to get in to see my chiro later that day.

Turns out it wasn't a major issue, more of an offshoot of the problem that keeps recurring, but in a vaguely positive way (if pain is the default, and that lessens, your brain doesn't know how to process a different set of feelings, it defaults to cold or vague pins and needles or such... so, yay, I guess?).

But then I caught the wrong bus home. I mean, it wasn't a disaster, it was one of the buses I used to catch to the old house, and I got off at the closest possible spot to current house and instead of the walk home taking me about 5 minutes, this took maybe 15-20 minutes. Also not the worse thing in the world to walk a little more and shake out my back after a chiro visit.

There was also no DnD this week. DM Fluffy was On Holiday, so the Thursday night game was already marked down as Not Happening, but he had intended to be back for the Friday game, but developed Holiday Cough. So, no thank you sir, you keep your interstate diseases to yourself, thank you.

I did also go back for a follow up with my chiro on Friday just to make sure everything was still where it was supposed to be.

So that was basically my week. It doesn't sound like a lot... it just felt like it stretched over a Very Long Time.

Anyway...

Brief sidebar.

Women He's Undressed is a documentary about a very famous Hollywood costume designer called Orry-Kelly. Basically if you can think of a famous movie from the 1940's to the 1960's, he may possibly be the costume designer. Jezebel, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, Arsenic and Old Lace, An American in Paris, Oklahoma!, Auntie Mame, Gypsy, Some Like It Hot... all him, or the women at the very least.

Plus he was also, at one point, in a secret relationship with a very famous Hollywood leading man.

It was, when I found it, free on YouTube. Worth checking out if costumes and old movies are your vibe.

Anyway...

Today was... not much of anything.

Basically, the supermarket, then wasting some time here before Ma went home.