character saturday: smiling assassin

We're dipping back into the Potential 2024 DnD Character Colouring Book this week. Because I fucking love a dragonborn. I've only played a couple, but they've both ended up as characters that I really enjoyed. And, of all the D&D dragons, the copper dragon has always been my favourite. So I really want to play a copper dragonborn in the new rules.

And given that Hero Forge hasn't converted the dragonborn head over to the Face Customiser, but she still came out looking pretty good considering.

I also like an atypical rogue. So a friendly, charlatan assassin is right in my wheelhouse. And this post absolutely came together in a way that made me instantly get a sense of who she is.

Because I have friends, associates and contacts in the lowest of places, I may have gotten an look at the 2024 Players Handbook before the book is released to all of the great unwashed, and discovered that rogues can now use whips. And what is more ridiculous than an assassin with a whip. So dumb. So Raali absolutely uses a whip. Will I actually end up doing that if I made this character, I dunno, but it would be real damn tempting.

I also have... A Series Of Opinions About Some Of The Choices In The New Players Handbook. Which I won't go into, but I definitely have them about certain elements. Mostly the things I have opinions about are easily handwaved or ignored, but still.

There is also a lot of stuff that I am Very Excited About. Which, mostly, outweighs the other stuff.

Anyway...

This week's soup was me mashing together the idea of ragu and my lasagne soup. Or, you know, making lasagne soup but with diced beef instead of mince. In any case, it was fucking delicious, even if I did accidentally give myself minor third degree burns when a very hot piece of noodle came into contact with my lip. Owie.

You know what's fun... when you have eight books that have been "In Transit" from the library for about a week and a half and only two of them show up by the end of the week. Urgh. So, that's why this week's Mini Movie Review is only two movies. Because I kept expecting other things to show up, and nothing had done before Friday.

What we did have was Murder By Death from 1976. It's a weird movie that often doesn't make a lot of sense, but is doing so intentionally. Also, some egregious Yellow Face makeup/performance from Peter Sellers, which is an incredibly yikesy. Otherwise, it's silly, fun, nonsense with an amazing cast.

The other movie was the third Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Did I previously say "fuck Guardians" because it was the only Marvel movie I hadn't caught up on and didn't intend to? Yes, yes I did. However I picked it up when I was at the library a week ago because nothing else I'd ordered had some in and it was just sitting there. And I was planning to watch it on Monday... didn't watch it. Planned to watch it on Tuesday... didn't watch it. Finally just gave up and watched it on Wednesday night.

I have... Thoughts, Feelings and Opinions. Firstly, I didn't see (and now won't both) the Guardians Christmas Special, so it turns out that I missed out on a little context for this movie. But not enough for it to matter. 

Did I spend the first part of this movie siding with Will Poulter's Adam Warlock and enjoyed watching him smack the living shit out of the Guardians as a group? Yes, yes I did. Did I want to shove Chris Pratt AND Starlord's fucking entitled asses into the nearest airlock and eject him into space for full 90% of this movie? Yes, yes I did. Did I fail to really give a shit about Rocket and his Tragic Backstory? Yes, I really did. Do I only know about some of these new characters because of my continued obsession with Marvel Snap? Yes, absolutely. Did the movie slightly win me over by the end, and I'm okay with most of how it ended? Slightly. 

Would I have been unhappy to see Starlord die at the end, no. But at least they didn't get him and Gamora back together, because then I would have lobbed my remote at the TV. Making her come around to him even a tiny bit was bad enough, because that was some White Straight Male Privilege Bullshit right there. Sure, you loved the other version of Gamora, but she died. Think of this Gamora as her identical twin sister who you have literally never met before and who doesn't like you. Now relook at all your behaviour and understand what as asshole you are.

But now I am absolutely officially done with Guardians movies. We closed out the storyline, resolved all the stuff that needed to get resolved, I don't need to revisit these characters unless they happen to show up in somebody else's better movie, and then I will roll my eyes and move on.

So that was movies.

Otherwise, Friday was Chiro Day. So I did my usual wander around town, looked at a few things or rather looked for some things that aren't available yet, and came home.

Friday Night DnD was not exactly what I was expecting. I had thought we were going to go dashing off to have important conversations in far off places, and what we actually did was solve a bunch of riddles (thankfully, easily... or at least one of the three of us knew the answer, even when the other two were stumped). And finding out that when your BBEG has access to a future predicting oracle, you were always preordained to be the ones to get in the way of her plans.

So, you know, that was novel.

Anyway...

Today was relatively chill. But it always feels like I haven't really bought very much when I decide to make something like Tuna Morney instead of soup. Mostly because I buy minimal vegetables.

After unpacking and futzing around a little, we went to Big W to find me a replacement for my hair/beard trimmer which is currently dying. I had looked in the city, but they were more than I really wanted to pay. Will this not last anywhere near as long as one of those? Probably. But so long as it does what I need it to do for now, it's fine.

We also poked around the Christmas decorations, because, yes, as I have said before, I am Part of the Problem. But, honestly, it was all pretty fucking ugly.

So that was it really.

character saturday: alt boys

We're going to do a brief reprise for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book... with the full final version of my last Thursday Night D&D character, Dax Oreva.

I realised that I only posted an earlier version of him, and then added the final version to the banner art.

But, because of DM Fluffy shenanigans, we're going to briefly step into the Multiverse of Dax for a second. That's a thing that happens when one of your fellow players has a character who is a time wizard, and doesn't give the DM much of a backstory... especially DM Fluffy. What you get instead is a peak into the multiverse at other versions of who your character might have been. Even if it's just a name and a brief description.

And you know I then had to fuck around and make those characters once we were done with the campaign. Obviously.

Three of these are the ones that DM Fluffy invented, the second from the right is my own addition. But what's funny is that with Dax and with the addition of Brother Kas, I cover all possibilities on the human/orc/elf timeline. But we have human, half-orc, orc, uniya (elf-orc hybrid, specific to Critical Role) and drow elf. I suppose if we were to complete the circle, there would be a half-elf version too. That one might just be full Rogue though. 

Also, as much as I love DM Fluffy, naming things is not his strongest suit... so the human and drow timeline versions got more fitting names... and he can fight me about it. But once I realised that "dax" was an actual suffix on the Drow naming table, it had to happen. I did keep his name for the orc wizard, because, honestly, it was the best of the names.

And there was a version that is only one step away from Dax, but the main difference between those two was between requited and unrequited love. Also the difference between a lucky and an unlucky dice roll at a point before the campaign.

I'll be honest, the ones that Fluffy invented might not have been the alt versions I would have made myself, or at least with the Ranger I might have gone for a different subclass (Gloomstalker or Swarmkeeper probably)... because we're leaning very heavily on some Drizzt Do'Urden fanfic there, which is fine for a throwaway character mentioned once that I was never going to play. But at the very least, I would have picked a different animal companion. The idea of him rolling around with a tiger is appealing. Or one of the in-world creatures that looks pretty much like a panther with tusks. But on the plus side, there is a version of the Beastmaster where you can decide what your companion looks like each time you summon it... so, you know, it would definitely be that.

Interestingly, just putting these together, I started pulling on the timeline threads that would have needed to change in order to get Dax from Dax to one of these characters. Some of them honestly aren't that long of a walk away. Some of them are just a change the location or circumstances of his birth, or a slightly different upbringing.

I did keep Dax's grey/colourless eyes though. Because I feel like that's a one of a couple of constants throughout the multiverse. The day he was born and the fact that he was born with those pale eyes.

But this does mean that I can now put this particular idea to bed where it belongs.

Anyway...

This week's soup was essentially just chicken and vegetable... but I added some medium grain rice for a change, as well as a healthy dash of cayenne pepper... which very much gave it the "fighting off the last remnants of the cold I had a few weeks back" vibes. Because that will clear out your sinuses. Good stuff though.

This week's mini movie reviews are a documentary, an old favourite and a series.

We start with the documentary Scream Queen, by/following/about the lead actor in the second Nightmare on Elm Street movie (you know, the one that's incredibly queer)... and it was... interesting. Honestly, I feel like he could have just gone to actual therapy to work through some of this stuff, but at the same time, given that some of the issues he was dealing with were also very much public and out in the world, it makes sense.

Next up, an old favourite... that I simulcast with Fluffy (by which I mean "we both hit play on the same YouTube video at the same time")... Vibes. If you haven't heard of Vibes, I'm absolutely not surprised. But it's an 80's movie about people with psychic powers going on a "road trip" (for want of a better term) starring Jeff Goldblum and Cyndi Lauper. And yes, I put all those words together in that order, and that is a movie that exists.

And sometimes when you go back to old movies that you watched a lot in your teenage years, you suddenly go "well, this is actually terrible". This wasn't the case. It was actually better than I remembered. Still completely bonkers. And very much a movie from 1988, but everybody is giving their all and it's a lot of fun.

Last up was the Discworld adjacent series, The Watch from 2021. Is it on a level with the best of Discworld? No, absolutely not. Did they take ideas from Pratchett and go their own way with them? Yes. And, honestly, I like a lot of those places. They also fully acknowledge that they're doing their own thing in the credits at the start of every single episode.

I also love a lot of what the production design, wardrobe, hair and makeup and set dressing are doing. Some of the versions of particular characters don't quite work for me, but I like the core cast of the titular Watch.

But for what it is, it has a charm.

Friday Night DnD was... nearly a disaster. We nearly got drowned, we nearly got squished by a giant... but we still managed to squeak through by the skin of our teeth. Or beak, in the case of my character. We are into pre-end-game at this point. As in, the actual end-game will happen whenever we finish doing a bunch of other little bits and pieces that we didn't do before now.

So, some good old DnD level grinding. Which, honestly, is not really a thing that often happens, but I'm here for it.

Anyway...

Supermarket was as supermarket does. I'm winging this week's soup and going for a weird hybrid of two previous soups, so we'll see how that goes. Otherwise we didn't do anything exciting.

character saturday: merchant of magic

I've said before that wizard isn't my favourite class. But I was also working through all of the new 2024 PHB classes for the DnD Character Colouring Book, as I've said... so I needed a wizard to complete the set. And, weirdly, I do love a dwarven wizard. 

Also, because there are only four subclass choices for each class in the new book as opposed to the eight from the current PHB, Evoker was the one that stood out to me... the "make go bang" wizard if you will. It was also good timing because Hero Forge dropped both a whole new outfit as well as a whole new set of dwarven beards with jewellery in them.

Because I've also been giving everyone a different background, I leaned into "merchant" for Emrik. And he represents a group of either enamel workers or glass makers and both his beard jewellery and his staff are an example of their work. I think I'm leaning into glass makers, because then that also covers his glasses too. Plus, glass and fire...

Works for me.

Anyway...

I set up my "new to me" TV on Saturday... and then spent the next several days trying to find the bits in the menu to make it not make me crazy. Mostly that was turning off the "make the screen dull when there's less light in the room" because I fucking hate that. Also, turns out that the sound on my old TV was much better. But also, this TV is bigger and doesn't have a giant thick line of dead pixels on the left hand side... so, you know, swings and roundabouts. Also it was free. So how hard am I really going to fucking complain.

Not that much.

Soup for this week was a lot of my made up Minestrone, which was nice and thick and chunky and full of pasta. Was there a moment when I dropped the chopped bacon all over the kitchen floor and had to scoop it all up and wash it before I could use it. Yes, yes there was. Also, don't judge me.

This week's mini movie reviews are, once again, a movie and a TV show. And the movie, again, turned out to be a biopic when I thought it was going to be more of an actual documentary.

And it was also a gay artist. This time, Robert Mapplethorpe, in the eponymous movie Mapplethorpe. It was fine... but, honestly, it could have done with more gay. It felt a little "safe" at times, even though it often featured his explicit photography.

Between this and the Tom of Finland movie, I think that is the better movie overall on a similar subject. But it wasn't terrible. And I got to see Matt Smith a lot more naked than I necessarily expected to.

The other choice was the Watchmen TV series from 2019. And I really liked it. It's a slow burn, and I wasn't sure I would after the first couple of episodes, but it pulled me in during the nine episodes and I really enjoyed it. Plus the cast is outstanding.

There's not a hell of a lot else to report for the week. My head cold is mostly gone, which is good.

Also there was no Friday Night DnD because Mrs also had a head cold, so instead I continued Fluffy's Movie Education with Breakfast at Tiffany's and Outrageous Fortune. An odd double bill to be sure, but both enjoyable for very different ways.

Anyway...

Today was decent... and we actually got to do things which made a change from the last two weeks.

The supermarket was fairly average, although I think we were running earlier than we usually do.

Afterwards we did a trip to Kmart so I could finally replace the "active tights" I tore the other week when I fell down. Which would have been easier if a) I hadn't walked past them 8 times and b) if I could have found literally any staff member in the entire store or when I did find one, any other staff member had answered his radio call. But after tracking down the one actual staff member and him telling me they were somewhere that they weren't, he finally looked up where they were and we found them immediately.

And that was it really.

character saturday: farm boy

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that there would be a Wild Magic Sorceress in my future... turns out I might have gotten the gender wrong. Also, this continues the 2024 DnD Character Colouring Book edition along with Zak'n, Rin, Oren and Micah (amongst others).

I've been playing around with trying to make characters for each class and all the races without repeating any backgrounds and with an even split of genders. Granted these might not all be characters I ultimately play, it is more than likely that by the time I get around to a sorcerer character, it might be something else entirely. And while I did play around with a female Orc for a different class, I ended up trying out the idea of a male Orc for Sorcerer. And, of course, Wild Magic Sorcerer.

And somewhere in the process of making him and playing around with the new hair options that dropped this week, I kind of fell in love with the idea of him/with him. Also with the idea of both an orc farmer and a farmer who suddenly wakes up one day and goes... "what is this magic and where did it come from?".

I was also playing around with the idea of Shadur being deaf. Because one of the languages you can take in the new PHB is Sign Language. How well that would work on a practical, at the table way, and how well it would work for me to play a character who has high Charisma but is potentially unable to speak to everyone they encounter, and how I would adapt to that kind of character remains to be seen. But I feel like he's going to live in my head for a little while. And remain at the very least partially deaf for the foreseeable future.

Originally I tried him out with a couple of different magic focii ideas... firstly a crystal, then a wand... but honestly, he wouldn't have either. I'm not completely sure if the drinking gourd he's carrying is his focus, or if it's full of mead (which would, in turn, make him a beekeeper) or seeds from his farm or if it's full of like dried beans that he uses as a way to attract attention when people can't see him. Or, you know one of those things as well as being a focus.

And yes, those stripes on the top half should continue onto the bottom half... but no matter how I slammed that idea into Photoshop repeatedly, I couldn't make it work the way I wanted it to. So I gave up. But just pretend like it does.

Anyway...

Just for the record, I had four hours sleep and I'm not really functioning on some of the higher levels. But more on that later.

Soup this week was a pretty decent potato and bacon soup. Nothing to write home about necessarily, but decent.

My cold/flu thing did kind of knock me about for a large chunk of the week, but the cold and flu meds definitely helped. Right now I'm mostly left with a minor runny nose and the occasional half-hearted cough.

This week's Mini Movie Reviews are a very mixed bag. We started out with the fourth and final John Wick movie. I... didn't like it that much. It all got a bit silly, even within the frame of reference of "The John Wick Universe" because suddenly people wearing what are clearly linen suits are acting like they're bulletproof, which means Keanu spent about half the movie holding the side of his jacket in front of his face and looking like a total goob.

Would I have preferred a movie where Keanu and Bill Skarsgard spent two hours making out instead of being on screen together for all of five minutes? Yes, yes I would. Do I adore the choices the costume designer made about Bill's wardrobe? Yes.

I also don't buy the ending. I'm not going into it further than that, although you can probably imagine what the end of that quartet of movies might be... but they also absolutely left it open enough for another one. As such, the ending as presented, I don't buy.

Next up was a biopic about gay erotic artist Tom of Finland. I didn't realise it was a biopic when I ordered it from the library... I had assumed it was a documentary. But it wasn't bad. There were times when it might have been served by more of a documentary format with additional information about certain events. Also, the occasional on screen date wouldn't have gone astray in order to place us better in time.

But it was interesting, none the less.

And rounding out this little trio was the sequel to 2013's The Croods. The Croods: A New Age is... fairly pretty, contains all the previous voice cast and is also... a hollow, slightly soulless follow up to a much better movie. Not really surprising given that it's not the original writers and directors and that it got cancelled and restarted a number of times, also that with one thing and another it took seven years for them to make a sequel. I feel like every time somebody replaced the person who was originally going to be part of this, the whole thing got a little worse.

It's still pretty, and I still love the ridiculous world/animal designs. It all just feels a little too "by the numbers". Although at least they didn't reset everybody's personality back to the start of the first movie. I don't know that I'd recommend it, but at the same time, it's perfectly fine. It doesn't hold any kind of candle to the original though.

Friday I took delivery of a second hand replacement TV, which is bigger than my current, slowly dying TV. I haven't hooked it up yet... there needs to be tidying and reorganisation first but it's still very exciting. Also free, which is the best kind of exciting.

Friday Night DnD was basically one big battle... and a slightly more intense fight than we've had in a minute. Are we probably completely screwed next week when the kraken wrecks the boat we're currently on and drags us to the bottom of the ocean... but, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Or you know, free the king of the giants and get him to save us... one of those.

However, because it was a whole big battle that we didn't really start until almost 11pm, we didn't finish until about 1:30... and by the time I drove Fluffy home and then got home myself it was after 2am. So my brain is broken and very much at the "Fire Bad, Tree Pretty" school of thought.

Anyway...

I did also wake up to discover that I'd forgotten to charge my phone overnight, which was a minor inconvenience.

Otherwise the morning was relatively easy... other than the slightly useless check out girl.

And because Ma had something she needed to do by a certain point today, she headed off early, although not quite as early as last week.

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.