character saturday: demyan on repeat

If I actually kept all the old versions of my characters in Hero Forge, I get the feeling that my Dumpster Fire cleric, Demyan might have ended up with the most versions. Because there was a time there where every time I made "the version" of him, some new item would drop and I'd have to update him.

We have the original version from back in 2021... those are the 2018-2021 versions that changed very little. And then we had the Pre Face Customiser version, which I still really love. There was also a Post Customiser version, but that only shows up in the header. But then, during the Advent Season last December, they dropped the hand fan. The item that I had been using at the table as my shorthand to get to Demyan. The item that I should have flavored as his shield the whole time I was playing him, because it doesn't make a lot of sense that he'd walk around with an actual shield. So a new version was born. But not long after they dropped both new hair, shaved hair decals and a set of new breastplates.

Which brings us to where we are now.

I don't see many new versions coming from this point onwards, not least of all because the only thing I would want to update from this point forward is if they drop a new version of the hakama pants. Although they did revise the original version at some point, but I wouldn't object to a whole new set. Also, if they change the way that the minis hold onto items like the fan.

And I think that, in the real world, that breastplate would be longer and actually sit more on his natural waist, handing down over the pants. But Hero Forge doesn't like doing that, keeping a strict waist seam on pretty much every item that isn't a coat. So, my headcanon is that the underlayer and the sleeves are a very, very fine metal mesh/chainmail.

Anyway.

Short version. I sick. I've been on a slow downward track all week, before really hitting a proverbial wall yesterday. It feels like the same kind of head cold that I had back in 2022. Although without the overwhelming urge to nap. That might come this week to be honest. For most of the week it's just been a general feeling of lurgy. Which I dealt with, like I do every time I get sick, by mainlining the leftover Codral I have in the medicine cabinet from the last time I was sick. I did buy more of the usual supplies for combating being sick, but I'll get to that later.

This week's soup was beef and barley. And actually really good. Admittedly, because I resisted the urge to add tomato and did add a lot of parsley, it came out somewhere in the grey/khaki/green/brown colour palette and looked very unappetising, but tasted amazing. Also, I love using beef that just falls apart when you cook it long enough like this did.

My bruises from falling down and going boom at the start of last week are mostly gone, having been relegated to a slight dark mark under where the thumb pad meets the wrist. The graze on my knee is more of an issue, because, like I said last week, every time I bend or unbend that knee, I break the scab in places, so that's fun.

This week's movies were actually not from the library, since nothing I'd ordered in had arrived last Friday, so instead I fell back on The Maze Runner Trilogy... because I have all three movies but I'd never seen the third one. I also, weirdly, had a completely false memory about the second one. Because I had convinced myself that they had reconned a helicopter crash at some point... I have no idea what that was about.

It's a weird fucking series though. Because the first one is basically a sci-fi drama. The second one is a zombie movie and the third one is basically a heist movie. I don't know how closely they all stick to the books (I think none of them are especially close, based on what I've read), but I do wonder if the books also do the same tonal shift as they go along.

I also don't really "get" the ending. I mean, it ended, I get it. But I don't really know what they were going for, because there's a (fairly fucking obvious and telegraphed) reveal after the mid point in the third movie, and then everybody who knows about the reveal ends up basically dead... and then nothing comes of it.

Having watched all three inside of a week, they're all a bit of a mess, honestly. I think it's one of those things where they cut a bunch of stuff from inside the books that would explain most of it, and if you've read the books, you just kind of colour those elements in on your own, but if you haven't, you just go "huh?".

The ensemble cast does well throughout, although they do kind of get wittled down to a small group by the third one. And not all of those characters are especially memorable. But I enjoyed the movies well enough. And it was good to round out the story, even if it doesn't necessarily all connect in the way that I feel like it should have done.

I also managed to crochet another set of bracers/cuffs and get most of the way through a beanie this week. Turns out that the trick is using much chunkier yarn and a bigger hook. And because I was using variegated yarn, it ended up making a quasi repeating pattern across all three items that I quite like.

How well the hat actually fits remains to be seen. Also, because I took the pattern I was using that didn't work for me and basically modified it so that it did work for me.

In other news, after having had the kitchen tap work itself loose a few weeks back, it developed spontaneous holes in the spout for no well explained reason, and after the landlord attempted to fix it with a little bit of epoxy putty and it didn't work, he came and replaced the tap in the middle of the week.If you didn't know, you'd never notice, because he replaced it with one that looks essentially identical. But after having had general tap issues for a long period of time, it's nice to have it all fixed.

There was no Friday Night DnD this week, because Fluffy had Plans. But I might have pulled the plug on it anyway, given that I wasn't feeling great yesterday.

Anyway...

Today was... brief.

I had called Ma yesterday just to warn her in advance that it would be a short day because I was sick, and I didn't want to pass on my cooties to her. So basically we just went to the supermarket, came back here and then she headed home. And I kept a mask on the whole time she was here. Just to be safe.

And she was gone by just after 9:30.

character saturday: pink lady

Revisiting an old idea for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book... and there will absolutely be a Wild Magic Sorceress in my future... it probably won't be Tranquility though. She did definitely need a make over though.

I'll be honest though, I'm not sure the boob shading is in the right place. Or I resized it weird or something. But I like the re-do other than that, even if we could do with some more kimono style garments.

Anyway...

Lots to discuss.

So, after last week post, I fluffed around for a while and then set up the old PS4 and the new PS4 (so small, so sleek, so missing the pretty light line that runs along the top of the old one that I miss) around 5pm, thinking that, you know, transferring data wouldn't take THAT long, and then maybe I could get a quick play of Horizon Forbidden West in before I made dinner and watched a movie.

I logged into things, I remembered passwords, I plugged things into other things, I followed instructions.

And then I said "yes, please transfer all that data over", only to be told that it would take 11 hours. And I went "pffft, says you" because it never takes as long as it says it's going to. So onwards and upwards...

At first the system said 29 hours, then 13, then settled down to around 7 hours. And I looked at the little progress bar and went "well, it will make a big jump at some point, it always does, it's fine".

Six and a half hours later...

Not how I intended my evening to go. I let it run and made pizza. I let it run and half-watched things on YouTube. I considered watching a movie, but didn't. So I just intermittently watched a progress bar for the whole evening waiting for it to suddenly jump forward... and it never did.

But I have a fully functional PS4 now... wooo. And on the plus side, the old system didn't spend 6 hours beeping at me like it had been known to do.

Have I played a lot of Horizon Forbidden West this week? Yes. Did I accidentally finish the game? Also yes. And I say accidentally, because I thought there was going to be more game left... and then suddenly end credits. A little like the way the Assassin's Creed Black Flag credits just came out of nowhere.

But there might be post about the overall game later once I've wandered through the post credit game for a bit and collected my thoughts.

Monday we reset the counter on Yani Fall Down. I did, in fact, fall down on my morning walk. I might have tripped on a gumnut, I might have tripped over literally nothing. Nobody knows. So now I have some gnarly bruises on the muscle at the base of my thumb (which I just learned is just called the "thenar") and the mother of all grazes/scabs on my knee. I also tore my "training tights" that I wear under my short in winter. So, fuck all of that.

Also, it's been so much fun because the scab on my knee is right on the point where my knee bends, so literally every time I bend or straighten my leg, I'm basically splitting the scab again. So I'm just loving life. Which is extreme sarcasm, obviously.

This week's mini movie reviews are as follows...

The Suicide Squad... like, the second one, because the first one doesn't have the "The" in the front. I didn't mind it. I liked it more than Birds of Prey. It was a good average superhero movie. With a surprising amount of full frontal male nudity, male butts and men in very revealing white underwear. And that amount would be literally that any of that was in the movie. Also, I feel like this is how you do a movie with actual anti-heroes.

Next up was The Tiger's Apprentice (based on the book of the same name). Basically, it's your quintessential "teen discovers he has powers" story combined with the animals from the Chinese Zodiac. And for a movie that's from "Paramount Animation" (whose claim to fame seems to be the Sponge Bob movies), it's pretty decent.

Rounding up the week was Love and Monsters, starring Teen Wolf's Dylan O'Brien and a bunch of real weird mutated critters. And I enjoyed it a lot. It's very, very, very clearly filmed here in Australia, although set "in California", so that amused me. And I don't know who else could have pulled off this character other than O'Brien, because it's so very much in his Teen Wolf wheelhouse of dorky lovable loser who has a lot of heart and kicks ass when needed. I honestly don't know who else could have made played the part, or at least played it as well.

This week's soup was... not as good as it might have been. It was roughly Chicken Cacciatore inspired, but I put rosemary in it... which sounds good, but then I was picking tough little pieces of rosemary out of my mouth all week. And I bought a jar of olives that turned out to be little globs of nothing. For some reason, all the salt was in the brine they came in, not actually in the olives. It was very fucking strange.

But it was otherwise decent, just not as good as I expected it to be.

Friday Night DnD was us kind of hashing out some emotional fallout from the last couple of games. And also having a bit of a High Seas adventure. But then ending up running away from a ship full of Frost Giants. But it was still a good session.

It's just perpetually interesting to me playing a character who very specifically I designed with few strong ties to his backstory (he has people he cares about from his past, but it's more of an apprenticeship vibe instead of a family/relationship thing) in a game where the other two characters have such weighty relationships tethering their characters, to sit back and observe the other two players sitting in that place. I mean, I did it in the previous campaign (before I ran), so I get it, but it's interesting to just be the person who isn't in that place.

I'm not sure that thought came through clearly, but you get the gist.

Anyway...

Today was essentially just the supermarket. Nothing exciting.

character saturday: magic hands

There's a reason why I often just have whatever the last DnD Character Colouring Book character I've made sitting on the side of my desktop... it allows my brain to work out what's missing or get a handle on the character in general.

Zak'n is definitely one of those. Because when I made him, I was making a Warrior of Shadow Monk. Hence the fact he's a drow, he's dressed all in black/grey, etc. Also, I was fucking around with the idea of courtesan/sex worker as entertainer, because for whatever reason, I often gravitate towards the idea of a male sex worker in a lot of other TTRPG systems, even if I never end up wanting to bother playing those systems.

So chasing those ideas to the bottom of the jar gave me the idea of him being part of an order of Sune, goddess of beauty and passion, hence the amulet with the lips on it. And also adding a resized key, because the position I'd put his hand in really looked like he should be holding onto something.

But then at a certain point I was looking at him while also watching something on the laptop and I realised that he should be a Warrior of Mercy Monk, because they both heal and do additional harm... and the idea of a masseuse plus the snake tattoos (which I just added because they looked cool and I haven't really played around with those new tattoo decals very much).

And is there a large amount of Photoshop fuckery in order to get the "spider silk" mesh shirt in place, yes, yes there is. But I do quite like him.

Anyway....

I fucked by basic chemistry this week and made what should have been really good soup... bad and then questionable at best. Because I'd read a bunch of tips about removing some of the acidity from tomato soup, and I think it said either baking soda or baking powder, but I went with baking soda, which I think was wrong, and I also went with too much.

And guess what gives tomato it's general flavour? Yeah, the acidity. I also threw off my mouth's general pH and made the soup and my mouth taste generally a bit soapy. Not fun. I mean, it mellowed out generally as the week went on, but it wasn't great. And I won't be doing that again.

This week's mini movie reviews are the first three John Wick movies. I'd already seen the first one and really enjoyed it, but hadn't dived into any of the sequels.

I'll be honest, of the three, I think the first one is still the perfect version of that idea, but the thing I like about all of the movies is less the gun-fu/murder 900 people with a pencil of it all and more the world that these movies hint around without ever going too far into detail to over explain things.

I also love that in an alternate timeline, they're all incredibly low budget movies starring actors that you've never heard of or vaguely remember from the 80's and probably never made it past the first one. But instead we get to the third one and have collected people like Halle Berry, Anjelica Houston and Laurence Fishburn.

Also, the production design, costumes and lighting on those movies is fantastic.

If I had any complaint, it would be that a lot of the digital squibs/bloodsplatter/bullet hits look a little fakey. And sometimes the fight scenes seem to go from a little to fast to what feels like incredibly slow. But, once again, some of the fights are the least interesting part of the movies for me.

And I have the fourth one on order at the library... and have no idea why there are a whole bunch of copies just marked as "available on shelf" at various libraries and none of them are currently being sent to me. But it'll show up eventually.

In crochet news, I finished the second arm warmer/cuff/bracer and did, indeed, start on a hat. And progressed on the hat until I started to lose the will to live and then frogged the entire hat because I was going slowly insane because counting crochet stitches is my kryptonite and also slip stitch ribbing is really fucking hard.

I will give it another go, but once again just making up my own pattern as I go. 

After checking various places we go for a clear shower curtain, I finally thought about just fucking Googling it, only to find that Bunnings had some this whole time (well, I assume the whole time). So I took a little sidequest off to the Kent Town Bunnings on Friday... and, honestly, they need to sort out their damn parking lot, because it's a disaster. I did, however, get a park very quickly, but then, after asking for directions, continued to not find the shower curtains until I asked for assistance from someone else entirely.

Because they were both packaged in a shape I've never seen shower curtains packaged, and also hidden right at the bottom of the shelf and I just didn't pattern match them to what I expected to see.

Also, for whatever reason, the actual plastic on these ones is much closer to something like a department store bag plastic than it is to the inflatable beach ball type plastic of the old ones. Which isn't great. But at least this one doesn't look all gross.

And, finally, at lost last... after three weeks off, Friday Night DnD was finally back. Woo. But as Fluffy said as we were about to leave my place, it felt like both a long time and also no time at all. Which makes perfect sense.

The session itself was very much a "planning what comes next" kind of game. Which is never a bad thing when you're coming back after a break. We're also not that far away from "the end", but then the actual end will be if we run out of things that we want to do. Because there are more than a few loose threads. Admittedly, not all of which we care about, but some we definitely do.

Anyway...

Today was perfectly reasonable.

And I say perfectly reasonable, but it's also going to drive me very insane in the very near future.

We did the usual supermarketry, and given the amount of stuff we had in the trolley, I was sure we'd slightly overspent, but, turns out no. Not sure what happened there.

Then we went off to JB Hi-Fi to investigate the PS4's that they had on sale. And by investigate, I mean buy a very early Christmas present. We also then poked around both JB and Good Guys just looking at various things it. Mostly vacuum cleaners, TVs and sandwich presses.

The next step should be relatively easy... but at the same time, I have to remember passwords and also put up with the old PS4 doing the beepy thing that caused me to stop using it in the first place.

Cross your fingers for me that it's much less painful than I think it might be.

character saturday: mercenary champ

So there are times when a character just takes up residence in my head and needs to be made into a Hero Forge mini. Rin is absolutely one of those times. She started life due to the villain in the third season of Star Trek Picard... and then just became one of the better minis I've made in a minute.

Normally I don't really use the splatter decals, but something about her was just crying out for one. They started out the usual blood colour, but at some point I decided that acidic green goop was more fun. In my head, she's just killed an ankheg or some other kind of insect-y type monster, and is catching her breath/smoking her cigar because cleaning the goo off her gear.

Technically I think she should probably be a Battle Master... but I just like the simplicity of the Champion, plus she feels like a character that just does more damage more often than someone doing a bunch of tricks. Also, as a brief note for future me if I ever do play her... while it looks like she's in leather armor, that's technically chainmail covered in leather (I mean, it's not, but if I was going to play her that would be the excuse between her stats and her aesthetic)... and that leather gets damaged a lot, which is why it's all stitched back together and the colours of a lot of pieces don't match.

Also, while she very easily slides in the general direction of "gruff lesbian", part of me loves the idea of her just being in a straight couple with switched gender expression. Or, you know, she loves the ladies... either works.

Anyway...

This week's soup was chicken noodle and worked out really well. A touch of cayenne pepper certainly helped, giving chicken noodle a little bit of that "fighting Winter colds" heat we all need this time of year.

I also finished off the Star Trek Picard series this week... and it was... fine. I did subtitle the entire third season "Everybody Gets A Paycheck"... because I didn't completely realise what was happening until it was actually happening... but not only were the core TNG cast all in attendance, but also a few other people who had shown up in various shows previously, plus LeVar Burton's real life daughter playing one of his on-screen daughters.

Everybody gets a paycheck.

I can see why people had issue with it though. And, honestly, it's the worst of the three seasons. And there are story elements from the previous two series that just get shoved out the window in order to basically do TNG Cast Reunion. If this had been the only season... then, yes, absolutely, this would have worked. But it just feels weird after the other two.

Also, the ultimate Season Villain was... underwhelming.

But I'm glad I watched it even if it doesn't stick the landing.

This week is a dive into the world of John Wick... I've seen the first one, but none of the sequels, so we'll see how that goes.

After last week's footling around with crochet, I made a whole arm cuff/wrist warmer/fingerless mitten thing with the other red yarn I got for my birthday. Is it perfect? No. Did I look at several patterns and mostly ignore them all and basically just made a rectangle and worked out how to join it together and leave a thumb hole. I'm now working on the second one. And then maybe there might have to be a matching hat.

There was no Friday Night D&D because people who aren't me were sick or live with people who were sick... 

Anyway...

Today there was too much rain. I mean, there was the usual shopping, but after we got back here, literally the whole day's worth of rain arrived and just stuck around until Ma left and then stopped.

I am not, however, suggesting causation.

character saturday: holy sister

So, around the same time that I did my Three Loves of a Scoundrel, I had dipped back into Pery's character sheet and looked at his background blurb. And remembered that he was a twin. And that his sister was a priestess (rather than being a full character class Cleric) of the halfling goddess Yondalla. Which I keep telling myself that eventually I'm going to play a character who worships her, I've just never officially gotten there yet.

Also my foray into making the rest of the family members for Belben meant that I was on a roll when it came to sibling creation. Plus, it's relatively easy to make an opposite gendered twin just by adjusting the Softness slider on the face.

Like her brother, I feel like Dahlia definitely has a silver tongue and the gift of the gab, she just chooses to use it in a much more productive and less... criminal way. Also, as a priestess of the Nuturing Matriarch, she had been lightening her hair for years... either with lemon juice, honey or cinnamon, all of which the internet tells me, is a way to bleach your hair without modern chemicals.

I do occasionally wonder what a conversation between the two of them would have been like once Pery reemerged into the world and let people know he wasn't dead. I feel like she probably showed up on his doorstep one day and let him talk himself out before she took a deep breath and told him how much of an idiot he was. Because, yes.

Also, this is a character I haven't played in over four years.... and he still takes up valuable real estate in my head.

Anyway...

The less said about this week's soup, the better. There's a movie quote (I think, but I can't remember the movie in question, just that it's a kid and they're talking about... food maybe) that says "some experiments are doomed from the start"... and this is very much one of those.

This week's mini movie review is actually, once again, a TV show. Two seasons of a show to be exact. I managed to get through the first and second seasons of Picard and have the third season sitting on the pile to watch over the next few days.

Normally I am very much not a Nostalgia Nerd. I would often rather see something new and unique than just another reboot or remake or sequel to something existing. However, I was a big Star Trek nerd (specifically The Next Generation, Deep Space 9 and Voyager, less everything else) in the 90's... and the Picard series absolutely found all my nostalgia buttons and pressed them hard.

Part of the reason I wanted to watch it was after reading about it in Patrick Stewart's biography. He didn't say a ton admittedly, but it was enough that when I realised all three seasons were available at the library, I figured why not.

I also have a vague memory that people had Very Strong Feelings about either all three seasons, or just the last season... but honesty, if those feelings were about the first two seasons... I get it. I disagree, but I get it.

Because they do do interesting things with both the character of Picard and both old characters and the few existing ones who show up. Some elements make sense, some absolutely do not. I'm thinking specifically of Out of Nowhere Lesbianism that literally made me go "whut", because there is nothing in the show to indicate it arriving, then bam, two female character hold hands in literally the last 45 seconds on the final episode of Season 1. I don't object to it, or think that those character wouldn't be into each other (although... honestly, making a couple of changes to scenes immediately before that might have helped a hell of a lot).

The cast of the first season in interesting... the series tries to gaslight me into thinking that Harry Treadaway in a terrible cheap black wig and crooked eyebrows is "sexy"... which is isn't. He's vaguely creepy and the character falling in love with him should instead be hitting him in the head with something heavy and running in the opposite direction. Everything about him says Creep Creep Weirdo, and nothing says Come Sex Me.

And it's just weird to me when they cast Australian Evan Evagora as a Romulan who grew up on a planet where LITERALLY NOBODY ELSE HAS AN AUSTRALIAN ACCENT. Whut? I could have gotten behind it if the people who raised him had the same accent, even if nobody else did. And I already processed Orla Brady as a Romulan with an Irish accent... but also, the character is fucking amazing, but Evagora just sounds... Australian. It's weird.

Also, I'm sorry, but Evagora is kind of a terrible actor. He's pretty as hell. He does fight choreo wonderfully. I enjoy the character. But he opens his mouth and it's not good. I mean, it might be that element of cultural cringe where his very Australian accent just makes me want to claw my ears off. And he does get better in the second season, but, again, he's not in most of that season for reasons.

I think I prefer the second season overall... the whole Romulan bad guy/B plot in the first season was kind of irritating. Mostly the aforementioned character played by Treadaway.

And there are elements of both seasons that I feel like didn't make a lot of sense, even though I understand why some of it was there. Also, some of it slightly suffered from them having to make a story that lasted over 10 episodes. There is absolutely some filler content in both seasons.

But, you know, overall I'm enjoying myself. And I'm very intrigued by what the last season holds. Especially after the end of the second season.

Friday was Chiro Day... which was good, because my back had been generally complaining for a minute. Otherwise I just did the wander of stores I generally do, then came home.

There was no Friday Night DnD because Mr and Mrs are still away. And Fluffy was, I think, doing a work thing... so there wasn't even a discussion of movie night. Which was fine, I had the last four episodes of Picard to watch.

Anyway...

Today was fairly breezy. Well, actually, it was misty and rainy... but you know what I mean.

We did the supermarket thing, came back here and after some footling around there was some crochet... which, in both mine and Ma's cases will need to be undone and started over. Because neither of us did the thing we were trying to do correctly. Such is life.

character saturday: ovelia in memoriam

I've said before that this week's DnD Character Colouring Book... my first ever wizard, Lady Ovelia, was one of the hardest to get right. But, honestly, this version is probably about right. It's just a shame this is a posthumous portrait, given that she met her end in the middle of a creepy temple at the hands, eyestalk, whatever, of a zombie beholder.

I had done a version of her after the Face Customiser came out... then they dropped both some new dwarven rings as well as the snake familiar. I went with albino snake for the purposes of the model, but her familiar was actually a Spiny Bush Viper, because they're adorable little danger noodles... even if it only ever really showed up as a skeleton because of the location we were playing. And then I copied a bunch of text explaining the origin of the magic staff she has and turned that into "carving" on the staff.

So let's call this the "if she'd survived" portrait.

Anyway...

This week's soup was what I'm going to call "Rice and Chorizo Soup". Basically that, plus tomato plus veggies. It was very good. And nicely spicy from the chorizo without being too much. And it mellowed out nicely across the week.

This week's mini movie reviews are an eclectic bunch. Technically only two of them are movies I got from the library, the other three are fairly recent movies that were either on Kanopy or SBS On Demand.

Firstly, The Northman. It's a very... pretty movie. And I like that the end is what it needed to be. It is one of those things where the reveal that happens midway through doesn't really feel like a reveal mostly due to the actor playing that particular part. Also, weirdly, both the movies I borrowed this week had Anya Taylor Joy in them... and so long as the movie industry needs someone to play a vaguely Eastern European woman who may or may not be a bitch, she's gunna have work.

Also, I'm just going to generally say... the reason given for the fact that a scene that should just be full on nudity but isn't is that "you can't show wang on planes" is... some bullshit.

The other ATJ movie was The New Mutants, which even a casual glance at the Wiki page will tell you had a checkered history, not helped by Disney buying Fox towards the end of the process. But, as a "Marvel/X-Men" movie, it's actually pretty good. Mostly because it's not doing the thing that those movies usually do, and I don't think any single character gets called by their "superhero name" at any point during the movie. It's more "superhero movie as supernatural horror". Honestly, I feel like they need to do more of that... we've done the superhero thing to death, let's just start putting superheroes into other genres. Or, you know, we could have an original idea and make a movie that doesn't rely on existing IP.

But I like New Mutants for taking big swings and doing something different.

Next up was The Last Voyage of the Demeter, which I think got "Dracula" slapped in front of the title because the great unwashed didn't know that that was the boat that Dracula sails in from Transylvania to London in the titular novel. It... wasn't very good. I mean, they tried, lord help them they tried. But when I say that this script/idea/project had been bouncing around for 20 years, that tells you a lot. What they ended up with was "dumb monster movie" just dressed in the text of a single chapter from an 127 year old novel. Also, it doesn't help when even when "Dracula" is mostly played by somebody in makeup, it ends up feeling like CGI nonsense, because the bits that stand out are probably CGI nonsense. And when your creature design is Gollum meets the Flying Gremlin from Gremlins 2.

So... Shin Godzilla isn't a comedy. It's not supposed to be a comedy. And yet. When the Godzilla design mostly just has derpy eyes that don't seem to look in the same direction and most of the movie is people from the government standing around talking to each other and a lot of the individual performances feel like they're being played for comedy... it starts to feel like a very dark comedy.

And lastly... The Vourdalak... a 2023 French film based on an 1839 novella. Which is a proto-vampire book written before Dracula. And, weirdly, they chose to make the movie on Super 16mm and using mostly practical effects (including making the titular Vourdalak/vampire/zombie/creature a practical puppet), giving the entire movie a late 70's/early 80's vibe. Like, if you told me that they made the movie in 1983 and it sat in a warehouse until someone discovered it five years ago and restored it, I would totally believe you.

It's good though. Weird as hell, and, honestly, sometimes the 16mm of it all kind of gets in it's own way, but overall it's done well.

So, this week the weather got real cold on Tuesday and Wednesday. Like, actual frost on the windshield of the car first thing in the morning, new lowest July temperatures for a bunch of places, equal lowest for Adelaide, very damn cold for here in Australia cold.

No Friday Night DnD this week because Mr and Mrs are off on vacation for a week... so no DnD next Friday either. And because my back has been being a little bitch all week, or rather, my leg, funnelling issues from my back, so Fluffy and I didn't do a movie night.

Anyway...

Today was Finding New Things To Replace Broken or Dying Things Day.

Firstly, supermarket, as usual. I am inventing soup this week... I have no idea how it will turn out. I am hopeful, but also, am questioning my future life choices. At best, I hope it's fine. At worst, I'm mixing two different ideas and hoping for the best.

After supermarket, we went to Big W on the hunt for a new kettle. Because my current one has a small leak at the bottom, which comes and goes, but honestly, I'm not fucking around with the combination of electricity and boiling water. Also, my wireless mouse committed suicide one too many times last weekend and stopped working, so I was back on crappy corded mouse until today.

I had assumed that Big W was the better option for kettles. I honestly don't remember where I bought my current, metallic red shiny kettle... and the blog doesn't help, all it tells me is that I got it "at Arndale" in 2015. The assumption then would be either Big W or Harris Scarfes, since those are basically the only options. And more likely Big W, because I don't like Harris Scarfes. It does mean that that kettle has lasted me for almost a decade though, which is decent. Especially for something that I don't know that I spent a ton of money on.

Where was I? Oh yes... Big W. Turns out the options in Big W were... boring or ugly or dumb or looked flimsy. Sometimes all four. So we decided to head over to Kmart, even though Kmart, because I know that last time we were there they have many kettles.

And yes, that was correct. I had, potentially two many choices. Sadly, none of those choices were shiny or red. A number of those choices were boring or ugly or dumb, but there were a few that I really liked, and a couple of those were the clear variety, which just amuses me that you can watch your water boil. Also, both of those kettles lit up as they boiled... so... yes? Admittedly, I would have gotten the one that changed colour to denote different temperatures, but did I need to spend and extra $10 on a feature I was never going to use, on a kettle that was a slightly worse shape? No, no I did not. But the one I have lights up blue because... water? I have no idea. It's not as pretty as my red kettle, but if it lasts as long I'll be pleased. It won't. 

Mostly because we're living in 2024 where nothing lasts that long.

character saturday: little green guardian

I'm laying the blame for today's DnD Character Colouring Book squarely at the feet of all the videos walking through the upcoming 2024 DnD core rulebooks. Because of all the new artworks for the core races, the one of the gnomes is possibly my favourite. They just look so cute (I'm not switching from my deep love of halflings, but let's not talk about the deeply terrible new race artwork for the halflings... they all look like Dark Crystal podlings and I hate it), and there's a green skinned kid gnome at the bottom of the image that I'm just obsessed with. So I took that idea and matched it up with the subclass that I absolutely want to play as my second character... the Path of the World Tree barbarian.

And we end up with Oren Wildwander, guardian of a gnomish/elvish/druidic forest enclave.

I also hope that the final rules follow the path of the playtest rules and remove the penalty for small creatures trying to use heavy weapons. Because it just makes sense that they would be using a heavy weapon designed for them. If not, then the two handed maul (which is a combination of like three different Hero Forge items) just goes back to being a warhammer.

Anyway...

This week's soup was potato and leek basically... and maybe I should have blended it up... it was... fine. You can always tell when I'm not really vibing with it, because if I have any potential other option on Friday, I take it. Thus was the case this week.

Mini movie reviews this week kind of ran the gamut... Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (yes, I know) and Hail, Caesar!.

I was curious about TRotB just because it's the "sequel" to Bumblebee... but sadly, it throws away all the good work that movie did and just does the same old same old. Also, it introduces the "Maximals" who have always been kind of stupid. Because the point of Transformers is that they go from Robot Person to Some Other Thing That They're Disguised As. The Maximals just go from Robot Person to Robot Animal. And they transform from Robot Animal to Robot Person for a grand total of about 11 seconds on the movie, during a battle, so you barely see them.

The movie overall is pretty dumb, and then it really crowns the dumb cake with dumb sprinkles right at the very end of the movie when they try to tie in the GI Joe universe into the Transformers universe. It's just very dumb.

Hail, Caeser! on the other hand, is a lot of fun. I was kind of expecting more from it, or at least, expecting the story to go slightly further than it did, but I realised at the end that that wasn't what it was doing. And what it was doing, it does incredibly well. Worth a watch.

There wasn't a third movie this week, mostly because my back, much like clockwork, has been doing it's monthly bullshit. Fuck that literal noise.

Otherwise, it's just been damn fucking cold this week.

Friday Night DnD was... a lot. I mean, it was and it wasn't. It was a lot narratively, but we also dipped into a location I think we were supposed to spend a lot more time in, and then almost immediately dipped back out again and finalised some of Fluffy's backstory story.

But sadly we're off for two weeks because Mr and Mrs are off on holiday.

Anyway...

Today wasn't much of anything... I had vague plans, but then woke up to it just raining... so, yeah, fuck that. Plans can wait.

Instead, after the supermarket, we watched the Puss in Boots sequel. Because I'd grabbed it from the library so that I could give it another go. I think my previous brief commentary stands, there are cute moments, the speed ramping/animating on 2's that I think is happening in most of the fight scenes still feels... odd. But less so than it did the first time through.

And that was it really.

character saturday: dancing devotee

So... the new DnD Players Handbook is coming soon... and they're going heavy on the reveals right now, and I'm pretty excited. Then we combine that with coming across a whole subReddit full of Hero Forge poses that are very much "due to a glitch" and not repeatable by anyone who doesn't know what they're doing. But also, some of them definitely need to be real poses. Like this one. I get why it's not, but also, c'mon, get a little crazy.

Which results in today's DnD Character Colouring Book... featuring the new Bard subclass that is basically a Monk/Bard hybrid and that I'd almost be tempted to go back and give the bard another go for the College of Dance Bard.

Micah is one of three triplets, and the Bigheart Brothers are all involved in the Church of Lliira, goddess of joy. And because her symbol is generally three different coloured stars (yellow, red and orange), each brother has a costume featuring that colour, Micah being yellow.

Anyway...

Soup this week was my lasagne/pasta sauce soup... which is so damn good, but this one was particularly good because I grated potato, turnip and parsnip which thickened up the soup nicely. I also very much love the broken up lasagne noodles that go into it.

My movie choices for this week were a little bit all over the place. But I'm enjoying watching things that I missed out on when it was at the cinema, or that I had kind of written off as being a little bit trash. And I'm happy to be proved wrong.

First up was The King's Man. Both the third in the Kingsman series and a prequel. Starring Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton and literal human wallpaper, Harris Dickinson. But it also very much positively surprised me at certain points while also being a Kingsman movie. Thankfully it's also been a while since I've seen the previous two, so some of the Very Obvious References that they shoehorned in because it's a prequel floated over my head. Not all of them, but mostly the King Arthur references.

Next up, Bumblebee. Yes, a Transformers movie, after I swore off the franchise because it just got too fucking dumb and ugly and jumped the shark. But, you know what... Bumblebee is actually really damn good. The Transformers look like updated 80's versions of the characters for the most part, and because there are only really a handful of robot characters with dialogue or significant screentime, it was less of a "indistinguishable CGI robot punching other indistinguishable CGI robot, cut to same thing with probably different robots, it's hard to tell". And Bumblebee was always my boy. It was also directed by the guy who directed Kubo and the Two Strings, so that certainly helped.

I also, knowing it was going to be trash, sampled the dumpster fire that is Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. It's bad. Like very, very bad. The script is bad, the leads are horribly miscast, the effects are empty calories. It's bad. Don't see it. I shouldn't have.

Lastly, I did a double-feature of Deadpool (which I haven't seen since it came out, regardless of the fact that I own the DVD) and Deadpool 2. I'm glad I did the double feature, because they do work well together. And, elements of it managed to be genuinely emotional. Other elements, mostly the character played by Julian Dennison, didn't. Maybe it was the script, maybe it was the way Dennison was playing it, I don't know. But I just found him annoying for the most part. And yet it managed to grab me in the feels on occasion.

I've been crocheting... something... this week. Originally it was supposed to be a blanket. But then the yarn I'm using is probably a little thin for the kind of blanket I kind of want. And maybe the hook is a little too big. And maybe the stitch I was trying didn't come out exactly the way I wanted it to. And maybe I'm going to frog the whole thing and work out some other way to go with it. I might also need to put this particular yarn to one side and try something else for a while. Or go back to making little granny squares.

Friday Night DnD was very much once again Telling People More Things Than We Probably Should: The Game. But, you know, also, collecting potential allies and favours and such. And it got us where we needed to be, so, you know, overall net positive.

Anyway.

The usual supermarketry this morning. And not much else... although after Ma left, I took a quick trip to Burnside Library to grab some DVDs, since all the ones that I currently have on order are... somewhere between there and here currently.

character saturday: eater of waffles, inventer of zips

So, for various reasons, having played with the Thursday game for so long, I have a collection of OPC, or Other People's Characters in Hero Forge. And when I was going through and updating all of my own characters, I decided, fuck it, there are some characters that I could just make what we'll call "fan art" of. Your character is your character, even if it was made a long time ago and is kind of m'eh... I'm going to make my own version of it just for me.

And possibly because of that reason, I pushed this particular model further than I perhaps normally would with the facial posing and the implied action, but I love how it turned out. And it's very much on brand for this character, one of Pery's party mates from our Out of the Abyss game.

Anyway...

This week's soup was Halfling Everything Soup... only, I forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer on Saturday, or even Sunday morning, or even any point before late Sunday afternoon. So I had to just stick the frozen breasts in to let them soften up enough that I could chop them into small pieces. I was honestly unsure if it was going to be a disaster or not, but it worked out mostly good in the end.

I did something different for movie nights this week... the Sandman TV show, season one. And it was... not really my jam. I was looking, for maybe, more Sandman in my Sandman TV show. Or more interesting stories, I don't know. The episode with Death and Hob is outstanding. Everything else is... fine.

And Sandman himself would fluctuate between being really damn sexy and weirdly blob jawed depending on how they were shooting him on a shot for shot basis.

I loved Vivienne Acheampong as Lucienne and Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Death. However, the amount of actors who have guest starred in Doctor Who was slightly egregious. I mean, understandable since that show, Game of Thrones and "The Boy Wizard" have essentially been keeping the British film industry alive for the last 20 years.

And even as a gay man, the queer representation in the series is, likewise, slightly egregious after they introduced the 12th or 14th constitutive queer character. I mean, sure, great, but also whut?

I tried starting something with the very pretty yarn I bought last weekend... and I thought I was doing well, making something that was maybe going to end up as a lap blanket or just a generally small blanket... but when I rolled it up at a certain point, I discovered that one end was just a diagonal line, because I'd been fucking it up.

So, we're going back to Frog Town, and I'll start over, maybe make a giant solid granny square instead. I dunno. It took me all week to start on anything, and now I have to start over.

Friday was Chiro Day... the weather was also terrible. And once I'd chatted with the receptionist about crochet, had my appointment, wandered around the three places I wander around every time, I just decided to get on an earlier bus, which turned out to be one of the ones headed to the old apartment. Yeah, that was a dumb. But it was a dumb I've done once before, so I knew where to jump off.

But that also happened to be the time when the heavens opened and all of the rain decided to fall precisely on me. While I was only carrying a small umbrella, and this, like one of my other umbrellas has started to develop leaks from the inside, somehow.

So I got home basically soaked from the knees down and all down one side. Urgh. Good times, good times. Thankfully, cranking up the heater dried everything off relatively quickly.

There was no Friday Night DnD this week, but Fluffy and I did movie night instead. Yes, movie night, where we punished ourselves with a terrible movie that we knew was going to be terrible, because Fluffy is, in fact, a masochist and wants to inflict mental trauma on both of us. I guess that technically also makes him a sadist, because he wanted to inflict it on me also... whatever.

After that Hot Mess, I continued Fluffy's Movie Education with one of my favourites, Dangerous Liaisons. I love that movie so damn much. It was also interesting seeing it through somebody else's eyes, because Fluffy both made a connection about one of the characters that I hadn't consciously made, despite the number of times I'd seen it and also made me look at the whole movie with fresh eyes.

So, good for all concerned. And he enjoyed it more than I thought he might... or rather he enjoyed the movie and the performances while also hating the characters, which makes perfect sense.

Anyway...

Today was pretty average. Supermarket and then me acting as "tech support" (because, honestly, it wasn't really tech) for Ma after she called the ISP and they didn't fix the issue they should have very easily fixed. Grr.

That was it though.

movies: wish

I feel like I owe Strange World an apology. Because, in that review, I said that it wasn't a real movie.

That was before I watched Wish.

Wish is not a movie.

Wish is what happens when a multinational conglomerate strip-mines nostalgia in order to make a profit. 

Wish is what happens when you give an AI references to previous Disney movies and ask it to write a script. 

Wish is what happens when you utterly fail at a thing.

Wish is ugly, badly written, lifeless, has instantly forgettable songs, no charm or character and is a ham-fisted collection of references to the 100 years of Disney history.

Let's just back up there a second. Yes, I'm describing a Disney movie as UGLY. Because normally even when a movie is terrible or just, you know... m'eh, I at least can say that it looks lovely. Wish is horrible to look at.

Wish is also trying so fucking hard to steal Sleeping Beauty's lunch money that it's embarrassing. I mean, it's literally stealing from everyone, but, visually, it's stealing so much from Sleeping Beauty and just getting it wrong consistently.

Honestly, I could have gotten behind Wish with all the references and nostalgia if they were well done or if the story and songs had been good. They're not. The references are clunky, stupid and desperately out of place, the story makes no sense, and the songs are... nothing. They're empty air, instantly forgettable and painful to listen to.

Nothing about this movie is good. 

Even the villain is ridiculous and so deeply just an uncanny valley version of Chris Pine that I was instantly repulsed every time he was on screen. 

I could rant about this movie for a long time, but, to be honest, it's not worth my time or yours. It either marks the point at which Disney Animation literally jumped the shark and began it's slow but inevitable decline into pumping out trash or will be quickly swept under the rug and never spoken about again.

Everybody involved in this movie should be ashamed of themselves. This is an embarrassment to 100 years of Disney history. Do better.

So yes, this is the second Disney movie in a row to get no score out of 5, because this isn't an actual movie.

yani's rating: [vomit emoji] references to better films out of 5