character saturday: purple blades

Sometimes you reinvent a character, only to reinvent them almost entirely a short period of time later. Beltran, last seen back in the days of manual colouring, is one of those. He got a full makeover when I was refreshing everyone's designs after the Face Customiser dropped, and I liked that design.

Then they dropped the flowy scarf... technically it's a "split cape", but honestly, scarf. And I had to resist the urge to add it to about half my characters. But it definitely seemed to fit for my slightly extra knife throwing, acrobatic, thief rogue. And then I looked at my cast of characters and thought... yeah, there's way too much blue going on, I should try other things.

So I ended up going with purple. It also seemed fitting.

Are the knives with the giant hole in them at all practical? Probably not. Would they throw well? Also no. But the centre section on those knives is weird, so I did a little bit of Photoshop fuckery.

And I'll be honest, I made this back in April and looking at the tattoo design again I was struck with a serious case of "what the fuck was that supposed to be?". Turns out, while the actual image itself is, I think, supposed to be blind justice, in-universe, it's an interpretation of the Balance card from the Deck of Many Things.

More so from the literal meaning of "balance" than the actual meaning of the card within the magic item. Because I figure if these decks exist as magical items, they should also exist as mundane fortune telling decks like tarot cards. So that's just Beltran's card.

Anyway...

After deciding that I was going to frog the scarf I'd been working on last week because it just wasn't coming together the way I wanted it to, plus I'd somehow including a triple twist into it. So that was my entertainment last Saturday night... and I say "entertainment", I mean most of it went very quickly, and then I managed to get a tangle in the yarn that I couldn't get out and had to undergo the very laborious task of undoing the starting chain one loop at a time from the wrong end, a process which took about three quarters of an hour all up.

However, I then worked on the scarf throughout the week, and finished it last night. I'm not completely happy with my join. I decided to just do it as a flat length rather than as a circle like the first time and then tried to crochet it closed, which, my brain just flat out rejected. I couldn't wrap my brain around how that was supposed to work, so I ended up sewing the two ends together... twice, after the first attempt was a mess. And it's... fine.

I am very happy with the finished scarf all up though. The colour, the ribbed texture, the big chunky yarn, the fact that it's going to be super warm, the infinity circle of it all. New favourite scarf.

What am I going to work on next? No clue. I had considered a beanie, but all the yarn I have is slightly thinner than all the patterns I keep seeing.

Also, as a general thing, why the hell does the US, UK and Australia all have different naming conventions for the thickness of yarn? Also, why is the Australian one the only one that makes any fucking sense because it actually includes a number? Even the Craft Yarn Council have tried their own scale that actually uses numbers, but also, their scale isn't something that seems to get printed on actual balls of yarn.

So, fucked if I know. I'll just stare at the box for a while and see what inspires me. And if nothing does, I'll just fall back on little granny squares.

This week's soup was Chow-DAH... and not, I can't not say it like that. It just lives in my head that way. It was pretty good as well, which helps.

I continued working through the Marvel back catalogue I'd missed out on with Eternals this week... good, solid, manages to actually have a story and interesting characters, but overall a little hollow. Also, I realised that in a Post-Saltburn world I may never be able to see Barry Keoghan in a movie and not think about his penis.

I mean, I'm only human. 

Also, because I am human, I have no intention of seeing Saltburn, because it sounds like fucking torture, I have however seen the final scene because the internet exists.

But, back to the topic at hand... Eternals, better than Doctor Strange 2, not as good as Black Panther 2.

I also watched an Agatha Christie mini series, Ordeal by Innocence, which is full of very good actors and terrible fucking characters. I enjoyed it more than I expected to.

There was no Friday Night DnD this week. Also, it feels slightly weird to describe it as Friday Night DnD when it's currently the only DnD, but, it's the naming convention we've done with for many years at this point, so I'm not changing it now.

Also, it was a last minute cancellation, so I just watched movies instead.

Anyway...

Today I got to break out my newly made scarf. See aforementioned comments about the warmth of said scarf.

Otherwise it was just the usual supermarket stuff, and some Looking At Things on YubTubs.

character saturday: beestinger pairs

The last three Beestinger sisters come in sets of two... which, I realise as I say it, sounds confusing. But this week's Beestinger sisters start out with Belladonna and her fiance Beau, who wasn't originally a thing, but I made him for something else and realised he'd made a fun addition.

And of course, the Beestinger sister with the fiance is based on my second favourite (or maybe tied first) Doctor Who companion, Donna.

Does she have incredibly bad taste? Clearly, yes. Or at least she likes too many prints and colours in an outfit.

I also appreciate the fact that I ended up with at least three different halfling gods represented in the family. Belben has Brandobaris, Belladona had Yondalla, the twins (up next) have Sheela Peryroyl.

But Belladona is basically "front of house" for the bakery, but also turns her hand to both icing or decorating things and making various candied fruits and nuts and other things made of or with sugar. And clearly Beau has a very sweet tooth.

And rounding out the Beestinger sisters, the twins, Cara and Pearl. Beekeepers, gardeners and makers of mead. They're also the only members of this branch of the family with heterochromia

They also take their names from the last two good companions, Clara and Billie. But of course, I went with the first name of the actress who plays her, Pearl Mackie. And like the character she played, I always had in the back of my head that Pearl was the other same sex attracted member of the family (Belben being the other one, because your first character is always mostly just you).

I also envisaged that the pair of them turned the little plot of grass behind the bakery into a riot of wildflowers and herbs and ingredients their mother uses for remedies and teas. And the flowers also feed the wicker beehives they use. Well, the bees in said beehives, obviously.

Anyway.

This week was a week full of tomato soup and cheese toasties. And I pretty much perfected my cheese toasties (the secrets are low heat, real butter and using a vegetable peeler to slice really really thin pieces of cheese and then using a lot of them). I did run out of steam for the soup on Friday, not through any fault of the soup, and I will say that I non-zero amount of that might have been that I'd basically run out of good bread for toasties at that point.

After doing some rough calculations on the granny square blanket I was attempting to make for myself I discovered that I would need something in the region of 180 squares... and have made 24. So, while I'm not necessarily giving up... I am putting that on the back burner a little. Also I want to maybe do some different pattern squares, so we'll see how that all goes.

Instead I decided to maybe try something that would take longer to finish. So I broke out the chunky red Merino wool I got from the Friday gang and started working on a scarf. And because I am a glutton for punishment, I decided to try the ribbing stitch I'd been unable to get with the thinner black yarn.

Turns out that chunky yarn, a bigger hook and stitches I can actually see make all the damn difference.

However... all things come at a price. Because I was trying to make it into an infinity scarf, but managed to twist the first row around on itself completely, so the whole thing has a giant kink in it and also, my join is absolutely fucking hideous because it's the point where I need to flip the work around and go back the way I've come and it's a disaster.

So I came to a decision last night, even though I'm just about at the end of the second ball of yarn... I'm frogging the whole thing, starting over, and making it a straight scarf that I will then stitch together at the end.

On the plus side, it only took me a couple of days to get to this point, so I should be able to get back to the point I'm at now pretty quickly.

Oh, yeah, before I forget, I picked up a couple of the later Marvel movies from the library last Friday, because they're just sitting there and why not. Specifically Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Wakanda Forever is, potentially barring the usual Mandatory Third Act Giant Battle Scene, sensational. If they could have seen their way clear to lifting that nonsense out, it would have been pretty much perfect. I get why it's there, but it's not needed. Because the movie is a conversation about grief. Partly the grief of the cast and crew at the loss of Chadwick Boseman, and partly the grief of the characters at the loss of the character of Black Panther.

It's also funny that you can see the parts of the script that I think existed before Boseman died, because there are a number of scenes that you could clearly just swap out Black Panther and add in either Shuri or Queen Ramonda. But there are other parts that absolutely only exist because of Boseman's absence. Props also go to both Angela Basset and Letitia Wright who carry the entire movie on their collective shoulders. Well, the pair of them along with Ruth E. Carter, the costume designer.

The other thing I could have pretty much done without was The White People. Because the scenes back in Washington with Martin Freeman and Julia Louis-Dreyfus add nothing. Also, is Louis-Dreyfus wearing a fake nose in addition to what might be a terrible wig, or is that just her face? Yeah, none of that please.

It's also 100% a female driven movie. Basically there are three male characters (with more than like four lines) and only the villain is really what I'd class as a main character... everyone else is a woman, and a woman of colour at that.

I do find it interesting that both movies include "the next generation" of Marvel characters, so it's clear where they're headed, because unlike the comics, they can't just keep reusing the same characters over and over and over as their actors age out of the roles or refuse to come back or retire or whatever.

In contrast to Wakanda Forever, Multiverse of Madness is just... dumb. Sam Rami was so busy try to either ram in Constant References to either his own back catalogue or Things From The Comics, that they don't bother to really have a movie in their movie. It wasn't unwatchable, it was just incredibly underwhelming. There were bits that I disliked, unfortunately most of those things were anything  including Banderscatch Crumplebottom and Not Amy Adams. And mostly the things I did like was anything involving Elizabeth Olsen.

And not only because this movie gets us one step closer to Hulkling and Wiccan in a movie. Also, now that we're fucking with Multiverses, nobody who might die STAYS dead, because we can just go pluck them out of some other universe.

So, there you go, a mini double movie review out of nowhere. Not enough to make it it's own post, so it can just live here, lost to time.

Thursday Night DnD was... The End. The end of this campaign. The end of the adventures for these characters. The end of my involvement in Thursday Night DnD for... the foreseeable future. Am I sad? Not especially. Am I happy? Not especially. I suppose "relieved" is the better term. But even that's not completely accurate. I have no strong opinions at this time.

Ask me again later I guess. Or don't.

Friday Night DnD was Doing A Heist Without Heisting Anything. And Much Angst About Graph Paper Children. Good though.

Anyway.

Today was basically the Supermarket, followed by Looking At Things at Kmart.

character saturday: big sisters

And finally we come to the sisters of my first character. Well, the two oldest sisters anyway. I don't even really remember the original reason why I gave Belben five older sisters... it makes sense once the naming convention happened, but I honestly don't remember what came first. Maybe I just wanted to make him the literal baby of the family.

Also, the vast jump in quality between their first appearance and now... staggering.

The naming convention for the sisters is pretty simple. All the Doctor Who companions I like from 2005 to 2017. Guess who doesn't get a shout out. So we start with Rose, obviously, who works in the bakery and will eventually take it over from her parents. And the blonde hair obviously comes from the Longpond side of the family.

Weirdly, or not, I guess, she's my favourite of the sisters, Belben's favourite sister and the model that came out the best I think. But then Rose is my favourite of the companions for the most part (Donna being a close second).

For Marigold, we have Martha as the companion equivalent. And cleric vs doctor. I think I went cleric instead of just making her a healer in general, because this branch of the family isn't just going to have a single adventurer in this generation.

Anyway...

A very generic soup this week... kinda sorta minestrone with cabbage and sausage that didn't quite hold up the way it should have done. But tasty enough.

The Hexagon Cardigan is finally finished! There will probably be a full post about it this week, but it's pretty good. Not perfect, but good for my first "wearable". Because I refuse to count scarves as a "wearable". I did discover a couple of potential issues, both of which would have been obvious if I'd thought about it for 11 seconds. Firstly, acrylic yarn... this thing is going to be a bitch for static cling. And secondly, yeah, your sleeves have giant holes all through them, because it's granny stitch, and the wind is going to get in there. Dur. But at the same time, ventilation because I run hot generally, so, swings and roundabouts.

In other news, my body hates me... I tweaked my back bending over to tie my shoelaces... grrr. Granted, it didn't last more than a couple of days, but still.

Thursday Night DnD was a slightly circular in-character "discussion" about what our group intents were that lasted for about an hour and that we probably should have had, I don't know, six months ago, and then the start of the final combat. And can I just say, while I understand the compulsion to "video game"-ize DnD "boss fights", I also really don't care for the multiple health bar/stages trope. But, given this hardcover, I'm not at all surprised to encounter it.

Honestly, all of the components of this final fight track given this hardcover. And I'll be glad when it's over.

Friday Night DnD was one of those plotting and scheming and planning episodes more or less.

Anyway...

Today was basically just the supermarket. So, there's that.

character saturday: the baker and the herbalist

Eventually all adventurers retire... well, the ones who live that long anyway. And sometimes they go on to have a family. Thus we have today's DnD Character Colouring Book.

Brandien turned his love of baking and his role as the keeper of the Beestinger Family Cookbook into a bakery in Silverymoon and Melody turned her knowledge of plants and herbs into a combination of herbal tea/folk remedies while also cultivating and collecting herbs, spices and other plants in order to flavour the baked goods.

Also, an off-white leather and yellow dress combination... love it.

Anyway...

This week was Pea and Ham Soup... but for whatever reason (mostly because it had been in the freezer for several months at this point, and also then I essentially boiled it in the soup) the ham wasn't... the best, texture wise. It tasted fine, it was just a funky texture. So after I struggled through the small bowl on Sunday, I just blended what was left. And, honestly, that improved it considerably.

Finally, after a break of 76 days (or two and a half months), I finally went back to tackle the cuffs on the Crochet Hexagon Cardigan. And I attempted to do the simpler ribbed cuffs but my brain just went "yeah, nah, we're not going to retain the information on how to do that", so I just... winged it. Which worked out so much more successfully, because, honestly I winged the whole cardigan, so it was honestly what's should have happened.

Then I started to connect the two panels together into the finished cardigan... And that should have been the easiest thing ever. I was doing the exact same thing that I did to connect 140-something squares for Fluffy's blanket. But, black yarn... it's an ongoing problem, especially when crocheting in the evening, because I generally don't use the overhead light. So I got most of the way done with attaching it and then realised that there were more purple clusters on one side than the other side, went back and looked and discovered I'd been... connecting it in random spots by accident. I honestly don't know how the hell I even managed it, because I didn't think I was doing anything different, but it was what it was.

I tried again the following day... in the daylight. And got most of the way done and realised... that I had more purple clusters on the OTHER side this time. And tracked it back to a single spot where I joined two clusters to the same spot.

Argh.

Third time was the charm though. And now I'm just about done with extending the bottom of the joined cardigan... and then I need to do the "ribbing" around the neck/collar/whatever that bit is called (I think it's technically a placket, but that implies buttons, which I'm not doing), and we're done.

It's not a LIGHT cardigan by any means... even though the yarn itself isn't that hefty, there's just A LOT of it.

Thursday Night DnD was... fine. Anti-climactic. Vaguely annoying. Proof that I'm very over it. But, mostly fine. We're maybe two games out from being done though. And at this point I'll just be glad to be done. And that's not all on the group, some of it is on the adventure. Very few things I've played seem to ever really stick the landing, so I don't know why I thought this one would be any different.

Friday Night DnD was good. Like, my character achieved his overarching campaign goal good. Which was honestly, kind of a lot to process. Weirdly, our problem in this campaign might actually be access to too many magic items. And too many ones that require attunement, since you can only have three of those.

And speaking of Friday DnD... 

After last week's additional image of the himbo barbarian we encountered, the fictitious TV show we invented and Fluffy's off-hand comment about "making a still for the TV show" from the Hero Forge model... yeah, it was one of those ideas that my brain just wouldn't let go of.

Because of course there had to be other people in the cast. Which led us here...

And then led my brain to end up writing a fictional "retrospective" on the fictional TV show... which I may or may not share at some point, because I'm both incredibly proud of it and also aware of the level of cheese and cringe involved. But it amused me across the earlier part of the week.

Anyway...

This week was a little bit of a repeat of last week... with supermarket and movie at mine, while I worked on my crochet cardigan.

character saturday: the beastmaster and the baker

And so, we reach the parents of my very first DnD Character for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book. Originally this was going to be a double post with the parents as adventurers and then as small business owners, but something else came up, so we're just going to do the adventurers this time.

Keeping on the Doctor Who naming theme... we have Melody Longpond. And, honestly, it shouldn't take much guessing to consider which "water/music themed" character she's a reference to. Dad Brandien is a little more... convoluted. There's a book from an older edition which has a "build your own halfling name" table, which has a table of syllables that you can put together in various ways.

It's how I worked out, after the fact, that Peregrin (or Perygren to give it it's "halfling spelling", translates to various things, my favourite of which is "Loyal Baker". In this case, Brandien translates to "Adventurous Blue"... or, you know, a certain big blue box.

Brandien also carries the bee logo from his father's career as a bard into being a symbol for this branch of the family, having armour made with it, and also having a pin/clasp made for Melody once they started dating/got engaged.

Interestingly, the bakery thing actually comes from Grandmother Rosie... her character was a baker/cook, and, so it had to filter down the family line. I feel like Bran learned directly from his grandmother, and then everyone else in the family learned from him.

And, of course Melody had a peregrin falcon beast companion, because I was completely obsessed with them throughout my teenage years for a variety of reasons. Admittedly, the Hero Forge paint decal is only... about 90% there. Also, white armor on a ranger just screams "impractical as fuck", unless of course, you're an arctic rangers. She was not.

But sometimes you just go for the vibes.

Anyway...

This week was Chicken Noodle Soup... and, I have to say, it was really, really good. Possibly thanks to a liberal helping of dried thyme. And, also, butter.

DM Fluffy and I did a quick solo follow up session from last Thursday's DnD game, because neither of us intended to suck all the oxygen out of the room by doing it at the table. Plus, I much prefer doing those things away from the table if you can, because the rest of the party wouldn't know what happened anyway.

I went and took back the black fabric dye at the start of the week and bought some new socks with the refund.  Then I went to Bunnings to ask the nice man in the nursery/plants section what the hell was up with the little bug things on my (20 year old) parlour palm. And got a recommendation for some lovely chemicals.

I also sprayed the palm... and will spray it again in a couple of weeks... so, fingers crossed.

I ticked off "finish the crochet scarf that you started to avoid finishing the cardigan that your brain tells you is too hard to finish" from my To Do list... and it looks pretty good. Attaching tassels nearly broke my brain for any number of reasons, but I got better as I did more of them. 

Now I just need to resist the urge to start on making small granny squares with the same yarn to make myself a lap blanket. I need to work out how to finish the fucking cardigan. Because we've now reached the point where I should be wearing it. Argh.

Thursday Night DnD should have been a no-brainer. Because it was also a public holiday. But people can't get up early, essentially do nothing all day and still be functional humans for three hours in the evening. So, fuck the rest of us I guess. And, as previously mentioned, we're too close to the end to really not have everybody on deck.

So, honestly, my decision to step away from this group when we're done with this campaign just keeps reinforcing itself. Because while I enjoy them as people for the most part, this group is now dysfunctional bordering on passively aggressively falling apart. And to that I say... best of luck boys. I'll come back if you don't implode.

Friday Night DnD was... traps, spiders and a very lucky, very himbo barbarian... that we kind of lost our minds over and ended up riffing on it for more time than was sensible... including inventing a TV show. And then on the drive home Fluffy mentioned turning the Hero Forge model I'd made of said character after our last game and making a promo image for said TV show. And it just screamed 80's to me.

Honestly, it's very much a "You Had To Be There" thing... but, also, I was kinda proud of the final result... even if trying to do the "fake TV still" process did take me far longer than it should have. And I had to go back in at the last minute to change the colour of his eyes to blue, because I forgot that they were blue.

It's very dumb, but it amuses me.

Anyway...

Today was pretty standard. Supermarket, then home, when we ended up just watching a movie before Ma toddled off home.

character saturday: the boxer and the bumblebee

Last week we hit the great grandparents... this week we have the grandparents. Back when they were adventurers. Because everybody in that line was an adventurer. Or at least all the direct antecedents on that side of the family.

Also, this combined shot of Iona and Javic became more of an action shot given that it looks like Javic is casting a healing spell on a beat-up Iona. I also do love the idea of a relationship between a physically strong woman and a socially strong man.

And keeping with the Doctor Who name theming... Javic coming from a certain greatcoat-wearing, bisexual former time agent... and Iona being an imperfect female version of the name Ianto.

I also like to think that Javic was known as Bumblebee when he was an adventurer, because of his outfit and his surname, and created the bee symbol that became important to the family line going forward. And the text on the lute gives it the name of Honey. Because of course.

Anyway...

This week was Lasagne Soup... which always sounds dumb, as I've probably said in the past, but it gives you exactly the right description for what it is. Technically it's also just "pasta sauce soup", but I make it with broken up lasagne noodles, so... you know. It is good though.

I also managed to embed a teeny tiny piece of glass in my foot after breaking a glass. Because that happens when you don't realise a piece of glass smaller than a grain of rice has fallen on the other side of the kitchen counter and you turn on the spot...

And it takes two days for you to be able to dig it out of your foot with tweezers. [shudders]

Thankfully, it was the part of my foot that is thicker skin and it wasn't continually painful for two days.

Otherwise, I kind of finished my crochet scarf... but I don't like the way I finished it, so I need to undo the last row and try again. And I haven't gotten there yet.

Thursday Night DnD happened... and was all going... very well, until the last five minutes where my character ended up being teleported/transported to a different version of the room we went into than everybody else... which is where the bad guys where. Well, some bad guys, a bunch of mind controlled NPCs who used to be our friends and the character that is the alternative universe version of one of the PCs... yeah, DnD is fucking weird.

Is my orc boy having a slight saviour complex that will lead him to do something incredibly stupid? Oh absofuckinglutely. Will I try to be at least a little bit smart about it? I mean, I'll TRY... but his personality trait it literally "nothing is more important than life, and I never leave anyone in danger", plus he's in a room that enflames his passions. Fuck... he's gunna die isn't he...

Well, I can go invisible 6 more times... so... fingers crossed.

I'm also going to try to have a pre-session with DM Fluffy in order to at least get a sense of what I'm doing while the rest of the party fumble around and do what they do. So we don't have to cut back and forth between scenes. Because if I'm doing a dumb, I don't want them to feel like they have to try and find/save me.

Because I'm definitely going to do some kind of dumb.

There was no Friday Night DnD because small children and school holidays exist. So I ate bread, drank gin and tonic and rewatched Mad Max Fury Road, because I'd read a book about the making of it and wanted to rewatch it.

I will say that I stand by a non-zero amount of what I said after I saw it originally. I did kind of like certain characters more, understanding some of the backstory a little more. But I feel like it's a movie where the title character is actually unnecessary and... honestly, while having almost no dialogue, actually has all of the literal worst dialogue in the movie. And Tom Hardy is giving a solid C+ performance against most of the major characters giving an A performance at worst.

And Nux is still my favourite character.

Anyway...

Today wasn't much of anything.

Supermarket, then some sharing of things on the YubTubs... and that was it really.

character saturday: dynasty forebears

This week's DnD Character Colouring Book is actually the foundation upon which I built last week's images. Because I'd been messing around with updating the extended family of my first ever DnD character, who have existed as Hero Forge models since the very early days, and then started putting the various couples together on the same image.

So we start here, where it all started. Me getting inspired by Kate Welch's Rosie Beestinger character from the Penny Arcade DnD series, Acquisitions Incorporated: The C Team, who she very kindly opened up the Beestinger clan to the fans as something they could use for their own characters.

And, I'll be honest, Rosie is the start of my obsession with all things halfling. It fully solidified with playing Belben. But it starts with Rosie. So of course my character is the great grandson of Rosie. Other people were making direct "children" (mostly adopted), but I wanted a more direct line.

Consider this my fan-art of Rosie though. Because, at the point these two were together, she wouldn't have been a Monk yet, she may have been a Pirate Queen at the time honestly... but her backstory is still a little vague and fragmented (also, I gave up on both Acq Inc and C Team during the pandemic). I just liked how these two looked together. Also the green and purple combo of Adric and Rosie works nicely.

And yes, outside of Rosie and Belben, all of Belben's family have Doctor Who related names. Some direct, some indirect, some that are very, very obscure references. So we start with my favourite Fourth Doctor companion (and yes, I know he hung out with the Fifth Doctor also, but I never really vibed with Five), who I had a massive crush on when I was a kid... Adric. And interestingly, it turns out that Matthew Waterhouse who played Adric... gay. So clearly I must have been picking up the vibes... lol.

This mini is 1000 miles away from his original "too much armor" look, but honestly, it was when I just picked the kneeling pose on a whim that he really came together. Also, not gunna lie, adding pins/brooches to people's outfits since I did that with Inky... definitely a thing right now.

Anyway...

I attempted to restart/finish my rainbow hexagon crochet cardigan this week. Cuffs/ribbing is hard you guys. I ended up in a worse position than when I was when I started, because I managed to undo previous work. So I got very annoyed and undid it back to a previous point before I started closing in the sleeve openings.

And then put it back in the box so it could think about what it did.

Instead, I started making the scarf I'd been planning on, using the same yarn as the cardigan. It wasn't a bad plan. I hadn't done anything for the last two months essentially, so I'm a little out of the groove. Plus, the best thing about crocheting a scarf longways is that you can wear it while you're making it. And I did.

I still don't know what to do about the cuffs. Urgh. I think it will be very much a me Inventing Things when I get back to it.

This week's soup was good old reliable potato and leek.

No Thursday DnD this week because we're so close to the end that it doesn't seem completely fair to anyone who has to sit out. Granted, there are some people who could not be there and it wouldn't really impact the story one way or the other... but, you know... the theory holds.

Friday Night DnD was... a lot. Firstly, we got to the point of the adventure where the give you all the things you need to do for pretty much the entire second act, maybe even into the third a little bit. Plus we got to unpack some personal drama along the way, which, thankfully, I have very little of, having built an orphan with few connections for this particular campaign. Because the last two major campaigns were quite enough for my characters honestly.

Also, I got to put a long standing opinion to the test... for whatever reason, my brain just rejects the idea of Bread and Butter Pudding. I mean, I know what it is. I know that's it's basically just old bread, presumably butter, milk, eggs and sugar... but still my brain goes... "nah". For reasons that slightly escape my memory now, Fluffy made (well, Fluffy's Ma made) a very boujee one with dark chocolate chips and rasperries for Friday night. And I was 100% willing to be convinced, I was down to go "well, fuck my life that I've spent all this time not enjoying this clearly very enjoyable thing". I was right there.

It's wet bread.

It's wet.... bread...

If it had not been for the chocolate and the raspberries (and I'll admit, the golden toasty bits on the very top) I would not have been able to make it through a bowl. I nearly pulled the rip cord just based on the fact that the texture of it looks like you're slicing into somebody's brain stem.

And, I reiterate. Wet. Bread.

No thank you.

Anyway...

Today was less of going in directions other than the ones I wanted to go in order to get to the supermarket, so that was good.

And like last week, afterwards, we went to Haighs for broken Easter egg... which, like the last couple of years I believe, was actually broken/beheaded duckies.

Which is fine. Because so long as it's the same kind of chocolate as regular egg (which I believe it is), I have no issue with a beheaded duckie.

character saturday: three loves of a scoundrel

This week's DnD Character Colouring Book is a story in three parts... and kind of accidental. I actually started with Part 2, but I'm running the images in reverse chronological order. And I've run a version of this before. This is my Out of the Abyss character post game in three different romantic entanglements. Firstly, with his husband and his final name/fate.

But I actually resized up the husband when I realised that the size difference wasn't right. Also I like the posing better.

I also finally looked at Pery's old sheet and realised I had named his husband at the time, but the name was, honestly, dumb. So I went with the second version I came up with. I also named the bakery. Because I think it had just been "Beestinger Bakery" in my head, but that absolutely didn't fit (and also, my other halfling Beestinger baker family use that name already), so it became the more thematic Scoundrel's End Bakery. Because, again, as a former Charlatan, keeping yourself accountable.

Also, Husband Nathaniel got a tattoo, because of course my boy's fantasy husband has a big old arm sleeve tattoo.

And the pose here is much better. Partially because their relative sizes are much more accurate.

Anyway...

Part 2 is where this whole thing started. I'd been redoing the other halfling Beestinger's family portraits, and tweaking various older NPC characters, because honestly, the difference between the quality of what I've getting out of Hero Forge now and back in 2019 is... extreme. And going down the line, I realised that the version I had of Pery's in-game love interest, Eldeth, was even older than that and, frankly, kind of terrible. So here's my boy in game.

Honestly, this definitely isn't the version of Eldeth that I had in my head during the game. But I also don't know that I ever 100% decided on what I thought she looked like at the time. So let's just say that this is the version I would have made had I been playing that campaign now.

And once I made her, I needed to do a shot of her and Pery together. Even though their lovestory ended badly in two different timelines, because, honestly, you can't flirt with your ambiguously bisexual disaster DM firstly via fictional characters and then IRL until he trips over his own feelings and essentially runs away to stick his dick in the first woman to blinks sideways at him and not have the very volatile in-game relationship go severely sideways. Honestly, my own fault for entertaining an ambiguously bisexual disaster.

But, it was, relatively speaking, good while it lasted. And I like the characters' little interaction here. And her blush.

Again, the sizing is kind fucked. Because the Hero Forge sizing is... massively inconsistent and doesn't scale appropriately. According to their calculations, he's a little over 3 feet tall, she's about 4'5". But when you measure them against any other scale, it just doesn't come out that way (making him 3'3" only puts her at 3'6"... and Part 3 is actually even worse... so what the fuck is up with that Hero Forge?).

But I already said "anyway"... so...

This week marked the return of Soup Season. Mexican Chicken and Rice soup... which honestly came out more stew-like, because while I love a rice soup, it does absorb all the fucking liquid. And, honestly, throwing a whole packet of Chilli Con Carne seasoning was a good call. It was a little intense at the start of the week, but as is always the case, it mellowed as the week went on.

I also didn't think I had enough ingredients and that it was going to be a little sparse. Turns out that that was a complete fantasy.

It was good though.

Thursday Night DnD was actually very effective. Granted we sidestepped what should have been the difficult third wave of the battle from the previous week with a well placed Divine Intervention, which turned out to be pretty thematically appropriate.

We also levelled up, so we only have one more level up before we're done. And I assume that's going to be right before the final fight. So, potentially, I might print out my Level 11 and Level 12 sheet this time, just in case.

Friday Night DnD was an exercise in "Don't Touch The Thing You Obviously Shouldn't Touch". And definitely don't touch it a second time once someone else touched it the first time. It also further reinforced that I will attempt to talk my way through any situation where that seems even remotely viable. And given this character's Charisma vs Intelligence score, he will just talk AT you yet make very valid points along the way.

Granted, this party's propensity to split the party, even when it makes sense to do so, may well be our undoing eventually.

Anyway.

Part 3 of Pery's romantic entanglements... in his previous identity with his fellow Charlatan and former partner, who, in a very different kind of game, would have shown up.

And while Pallas came out almost exactly right based on the feel of him in my head, I think that potentially, the original version might have been closer to Nathaniel from Part 1. This also came out way more "We Saw You From Across The Bar And Really Dig Your Vibe" than I originally intended. So much so that I both added a key to Pallas's hand and decided that they were also pretending to be married.

This is also where the Hero Forge sizing gets wacky. Because Pallas is, according to HF, 7'2" in heels next to Falco's flat 3' in the same heels. Does that vibe at all with what you're seeing in that image? No, no it does not. I mean, I already knew that their sizing was wack, but it's really only when you try and match up a gnome or halfling character with a full sized character that it gets weird.

Also, four years later, coming up with more info about these personas actually helped me to solidify what happened to Pery that made him have to run from Waterdeep before the beginning of the campaign. Because I didn't know about House Minstrelwish, the halfling noble clan who are basically house flippers and couriers. The two of them definitely did some dodgy dealing in that space.

I do love Pery with Falco's longer hair though. Predictably, I'd listed the looks for each of the different personas he had as far as hair style, colour and eyes were concerned. I also started to see the transition he want through when he went on the run. Changing clothes several times, getting his hair cut, and eventually waking up in an alley with a knife sticking out of his back before taking on the Pery identity.

Complicated little shithead.

Where was I... oh, yes... today.

Today can go fuck itself.

Or rather, the decision to close a bunch of streets in Norwood for an extended period of time over a weekend so a bunch of people can sit in the middle of the road and eat overpriced food and get enthused about sportsball can go fuck itself.

So instead of the straight shot from my place to the supermarket, we had to go the very long and overly complicated way. Doubly so on the way back.

And then after shopping, we went to Haighs to get our hands on the best of all things, broken Easter eggs. Only to find they had a space for the milk chocolate ones, but no actual product. Grrr. We'll try again next week maybe.

Also, I've said every single year that the broken Easter eggs taste better, which is mostly comedy, but it turns out that I was at least partially right after mentioning it to the woman behind the counter. Turns out that their Easter eggs have more cocoa butter in them because they're moulded chocolate, so they do taste different/better. Who knew?

That was it really.

character saturday: the dino ranger

Did I just realise that just under half of the past ten images have all been halflings? Not until just now, no. Am I going to apologise for that? No, I I am no. Is it plausible that we're about to do a run of halflings? Yes, yes it is.

And a little like last week, this week's DnD Character Colouring Book is a character that was never really properly a character... Mielo Thornhill.

Mielo Thornhill did kind of see the light of day as a sidekick when I ran the one on one DnD game for Ma a couple of Christmases ago, and given that the new DnD source book has a ranger class I'm interested in, a bunch of racial changes AND default beasts for the Beastmaster that can be reskinned into anything you like, Mielo may very well get repurposed into a functional character at some point. I very much like the idea of him running around with a little parrot-feathered velociraptor (you know, the actual, historical, turkey sized ones, not the fictitious people sized Jurassic Park ones)... So he deserves another chance at some point. 

It also continues to boggle my mind the difference between what I was putting together in Photoshop four years ago, and what I'm basically able to pull out of Hero Forge directly with a few minor Photoshop augments.

Also, there are certain Hero Forge hairstyles that I just get instantly obsessed with... and this is one of them. And I've had to restrain myself from giving more characters either this version of the more textured version from last week.

And what better character to give a leopard print outfit to than a ranger living in Chult (where the dinosaurs live/they keep all of the jungle). This might also be one of the more subtle tattoo placements thus far, but I like what the Mayan symbols for "spirit", "book" and "bone" say about his character.

It's also highly likely that the Mielo model might get reused at some point, put in a different outfit and given different colouring, because it's a good looking face. Speaking of faces, I did enjoy that, pretty much accidentally, the Hero Forge raptor mount came out with just the right facial expression to give some indication of the character of Rascal. Also that if a 3 foot tall halfling has a 1.6 foot (at the hip) velociraptor companion, they're not that far off in scale from each other. Also the idea of a big fluffy idiot of a dinosaur in ridiculously bright parrot colours just appeals to me. As does putting them in a spiked collar, even though it makes sense in protecting him from other creatures.

I also wonder if me giving Mielo the same surname as the lead character in Hitchcock's North by Northwest was intentional or accidental. I assume the latter, but I wouldn't put it past my brain to have done it subconsciously.

Also, the name of the crossbow, written across the stock, is Lavinia.

Anyway...

Well, I gave up on the of dyeing the new chair covers. I washed them in preparation, and remembered just how much of a giant pain in the ass dealing with them just for that was, let alone all the extra drama of actually dyeing them, then rewashing them and drying them... so I threw my metaphorical hands up in the air and went "fuck it". And once the covers were dry I just put them on the chairs.

Firstly, stripping the old covers off the chair was a surprise, because I'd forgotten just how red the original chairs were. The answer is, very. So, putting the very beige covers over them was a little sad. I mean, they look fine, it's just that beige isn't particularly my vibe. But it will do for now.

Two weeks in a row of Thursday Night DnD... nobody jinx it. Most of the session was multiple waves (well, two) of combat, but at least it was combat that required a small amount of planning and strategy.

And I will say that as much as I enjoy the optional Steady Aim ability for rogues... it does mean that I tend to just stand in place the whole time. Which feels... less roguey. But then my boy Dax is much less of a "run and hide" kind of character. So, swings and roundabouts I guess.

Friday Night DnD was... a tale of two parts. Firstly, don't introduce a fucking Deck of Many Things into a game I'm part of. I don't want it, I'm not interested in it, I won't every fucking pull a card from it no matter what. It's a bullshit item that wrecks campaigns and there is literally no positives to it, even with this new "extended deck". No thank you sir and ma'am.

The other half was proactively kicking the ass of something that was 100% going to try and ambush us at some point.

Anyway...

If I live to be 1500 years old, I will never quite understand why people loose their goddamn mind on Easter Saturday at the supermarket. Are there really that many people who normally shop on Friday, Sunday or Monday that suddenly have to squeeze in their shopping on Saturday morning? Have the people who I know lost their minds on Thursday night because the shops were going to be shut for a single day who also need to get more things on Saturday? Do people actually do big gatherings that require the buying of items on Easter Sunday? Or is that just something that supermarkets try to tell us all is happening?

But the literal fucking clown car of people that descend on the supermarket on Easter Saturday has always and continues to boggle my whole entire mind.

Whatever... 

This week marks the beginning of Soup Season. Not that you'd know it from this weekend where we're having an Easter around 30C. But I'm going to essentially freestyle a "Mexican style chicken soup". We'll see how we go.

After supermarket mayhem we just came back here, watched the penultimate episode of Canadian Pottery Throwdown and then called it a day.

character saturday: punk rock halfling

There are some characters who are minimalists... you put them in an outfit, you look at that outfit, you go "yeah, that works" (although the last time we had one of those on the blog was back in early February with the elderly halfling barbarian) and some of them are decidedly maximalists.

Because they require a lot of fussing around in Photoshop, and then once you have done, you realise something about it needs tweaking, and so you start from the beginning again.... and then you do that a second time. And then you keep seeing things you could tweak, and you keep adding to things and before you know it you've done three versions of the character and the Photoshop file has over 75 layers.

And it all started with the hand.

Well, technically it started back in 2021 when Inky was one of my potential backup characters for our Avernus game.

Firstly we have Thaddeus "Inky" Oakfoot, halfling tattoo artist, monk and cleric to one of the more obscure halfling goddesses. The selection and addition of his tattoos was fun, but I will say that I enjoyed coming up with the history of his tattoos even more, and the fact that he'd basically been in or around all the major cities in Faerun right before the events of the major adventures. That his halfling luck told him that he really needed to head somewhere else before everything went to shit. Also, I do really want to play a Trickery Cleric at some stage.

But I was going through and deleting or updating some older characters and I looked at him and figured he might as well get a new face. And a new staff, new hair, new pants, a new pouch... basically a do-over. And I was playing around with the new hand poses when I tried the "devil horns" and, suddenly we were off to the races. He suddenly became much more "punk" in my head.

So first the tattoos got some updates. And the idea that he had perhaps avoided the events of major adventures kind of morphed into the idea that he was there for most of them, just at a different time and doing different things that the adventure as written. Which meant that some of his tattoos got upgraded to cover books the old ones didn't. And the largest tattoo, which covers his whole chest is of Yondalla, the matriarch of the halfling pantheon.

Then I decided to give him the same brooch as Miss Jamjar, because it's Yondalla's holy symbol. Which triggered the idea of punks and badges... or just badges in general.

And I started adding various "in world" badges. Things he definitely could have gotten his hands on, things he probably couldn't have. Things that tell a story.

Then I realised he should always have been an Inkfoot and not an Oakfoot.

And in looking up details for the goddess Dallah Thaun and saw that prayers to her start off with "If only...". So that became the repeated motto on the metal parts of his staff in various in-game (and not) fonts. Which then led to the "graffiti" on the staff. And the invention of a partner or lover or something with a first name starting with M. I haven't even decided on a gender for them to be honest. There are also some definite "crossing into other fictional universes" references across his whole deal.

One of the last additions was taking some existing items (much larger items like chain-whips and a giant padlock) and turning them into his padlock necklace. 

Also, not that you can see it but just because it amuses me and is it's own in-joke, he only wears pink socks.

Maybe some version of him should just be my perpetual back-up character. He would also work well as a different idea for the first character from the 2024 PHB, which is kind of what this version is. And a character that would start out at Level 10.

On the plus side, now that he's been posted to the blog, I can, hopefully, stop making changes LOL.

Anyway...

We seem to have reached that point that comes around every March where I start the week in shorts and potentially end in a hoodie... although perhaps not as cleanly as that since it's going to shoot back up to over 30 at the end of this week, but the nights have gotten cold, so I'm very much on board for that.

That also means that it's very nearly the start of soup season... depending on how the weather goes next week.

Thursday Night DnD actually happened. And was... a lot of fumbling around on a very confusing map. But, you know, one step closer to getting to the end of this adventure.

Friday Night DnD, by contrast, did not happen. For all the usual reasons.

Anyway...

Today was the usual supermarketry... but afterwards I managed to cross a few things off my to-do list when we took a trip to Big W.