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Hi everyone! Thanksgiving has passed but it went really lovely for me, lots of time with family and friends and then I got to play videogames and Pathfinder.

Roleplay games:

Thonk hasn't had many adventures lately because one of the players for Kingdom Founders is having Constant Woes but the GM set us up a back-up game called Wardens of... something? where I have a melixie sprite named Deputy Sparkle (ACAB includes Sparkle) who I am having a delightful time refusing to acknowledge I'm very tiny as I play a gruff, dickish sergeant.

And I was invited to join the other game they regularly run (and that one player doesn't get sick as often, which is odd) called Abomination Vaults where I've made a Sacred Nagaji Swashbuckler named Selu (he's a dude with the lower body of a snake) who is Happy To Be Here, touches everything, and rolls incredibly well on all his attacks.

Thonk is such a pacifist/low aggression that Emric (the purple elf with horns)'s player who plays Shai (a busty kitsune lady) was trying to reassure me that it won't be so bad making my first kill and another player went, not a quote, 'he's finished shredding that NPC before you said that'

For Cthulhu, we finished up our Catthulhu campaign where all the kitties survived with a brief moment where Huntress the maine coon WAS going to have a dramatic death before we remembered this would probably upset another player who was still hurting over the deal of her RL cat so at the last minute me and Huntress' player switched it to Huntress taking on her 9th life and retiring after this adventure. And they all cheered when their witch NPC handler got a headshot on the bad guy that they had been rooting for since the moment she got a gun.

I had given an npc pet guinea pigs named Wiggle and Squeak so the cats could get clues from them. In the module, that NPC was dead all along, but I realized they would feel pretty sad about Wiggle and Squeak being orphans so I had the NPC kept as a prisoner/future sacrifice by the bad guy and was their ultimate victory of rescuing. My players were pleased.

Now the other GM is taking the reins and Ellery Duke the cameraman rides again. I look forward to making up more stories about his time as cameraman on Failsons of Beverly Hills. This campaign started with him facing criminal charges over his attempt to start a kombucha business and how his sidekick, Jessie (played by my friend Moss) and him are rifting because she wouldn't testify on his behalf after she drank some of said kombucha.

Here's the art!

( Pathfinder Art )

TV/MOVIES:

Started watching sitcoms lately. Unsure wtf is happening. Golden Girls, Brooklyn 99, Ghosts (US), Cheers, and now the first episode of Superstore. I'm really not a sitcom guy! That said, I am enjoying them.

I've also got a list of ghost shows on the go that I'm watching:

Haunted Hotel
Hotel del Luna
Missing: The Other Side
Slings and Arrows
Due South
Ghosts (UK)
Ghosts (US)
School Spirits
Lockwood and Co.
Boo, Bitch
Lets Fight Ghost
Hi Bye Mama
The Midnight Club


My movie list of movies I've watched since starting movie night up + whatever I watched while I was at it has now passed over a 100 movies and it's not actually complete, missing a lot from the start. So that's cool.

For October we're watching horror movies and so far we've seen: The Raven (Vincent Price, not actually a horror but a funny little wizard movie), Paranorman, and Wendell and Wild.

I liked the Raven, it was so charming and seeing a young Jack Nicholson was fascinating. I didn't know he was ever young. Paranorman was a rewatch and it's a really solid film and Ann and I were cracking jokes during the final confrontation with tears down my face because actually it's really emotional. And Wendell and Wild was a movie with the ideas for 3 good movies that were totally incompatible with eachother but were all put in the same movie anyway.

SCHOOL:

Got WAY behind on my Buddhism class which led to a thousand dropped balls one week but I'm back on track and mostly recovered based primarily on goodwill I've accrued. I need to not squander that!

Figure Drawing is going well. Very fun. We were practising face planes last class with little model planar heads and then she told us to apply it to portraits of our own faces with mirrors she provided and I did a decent one but I didn't put eyes under my glasses. And the prof goes, she says 'come on, give me some eyes' and I did some tiny dot ones and it cracked her up.

Also for self portrait in the style of an artist, I went with Charles M. Schulz and I hope I get a good grade because the prof liked how I talked about the place of the newspaper comic as a piece of art in The Olden Days when we didn't get as much every single day as we do now.

I keep looking at my old art and comics and being caught up in memories and enjoyment and I keep not working on the actual art I have to do now.

That said, I've learned why my old comics have more dynamic posing than my recent ones - I found a scan of an unfinished one from my youth and I used to construct and pose bodies completely differently, so I'm going to return to that.

I turned 40 this past 5th and it was a nice birthday with good food and company. No complaints!

On my birthday weekend I went to Winnipeg to watch my mom participate in boat races and she did very well, almost placing on the podium! I was very proud. I spent most of it sitting in my chair with its canopy and refusing to move under any circumstance or eat or drink anything so I wouldn't have to use the terrifying port-a-potties.

Saw many delightful dogs too.

Next week I'll be back in the pottery studio - got a lot of plans for that! Including gonna make little tiles OH MY GOD I finally remembered what I kept forgetting to buy! A square cookie cutter! Thanks, everyone!

I'll do a movie round up soon. It's gonna be friggin' huge.

I should be asleep but I smashed my toe by accident with a door. In the throes of immense pain, I gasped out 'oh golly!'

My gf's pal is now her ex-pal and during the course of their friendship dissolution we found out he had been sharing very Violent thoughts about me with someone else which, you know, fun. The actual fight that ended their long-standing palhood is not mine to share but I promise you it was deeply stupid on his part. She is an innocent creature who has never done anything wrong ever.

But it was kind of a 'wow, okay!' moment when I found out what he'd been saying/that the other person had let him say it.

Meanwhile, I have watched Many Things and need to make a big post about it.

I also need to make a post of the stuff I've seen at the thrift store, because I enjoy photographing the baubles.

Today's plan is to headswitch a pair of barbies. I'm told putting them on a heating pad is a good idea? I'll get one from my sister once she wakes up.

I have a story to finish writing (doing research now) + hoping to sign up for two exchanges soon, both crossover focused.

In my heart, I want Jean Luc Picard to ride majestically on the dragon queen Alexstrasza's back over the green fields of Azeroth and no one can stop me.

Best beloved Elly has requested we find some new shows to add to our viewing list that:

1) Less to very less white
2) Little to no cops
3) Still mysteries

Which left out Murder She Wrote and Miss Marple, unfortunately, at point number 1. Frankie Drake actually fit the bill pretty nicely but I'm using that as my dinner eating show and I don't want to share.

I thought about putting a call out for story recs except even when I specify *very clearly* the type of shows we're looking for in question (episodic only, no major arcs, on the light side of violence) we always get nc-17 five seasons with one mystery in its entirety recs. Every time!

Every damn time!

I guess I shouldn't be saying 'read my mind', I should be saying 'read my post' but this is the internet where people ask for women writers of colour and get recced Terry Pratchett and Brandon Sanderson.

Anyway, I'm getting my browse on with my many many many many streaming channels bought during a sale so I have 2 months to go through some shows, you know?

I tried out a concert on Stingray and was like 'oh hey Megadeath do I like Megadeth?' and the first song featured: Israel, Homeland, and Holy Wars and I went 'okay uhhh I wonder who Rory Gallagher is, he has a nice hat, let's watch his concert!'

Rory Gallagher was a nice treat and I'll check out more of his music.

Have I done anything else lately other than watch things? No, and I'm worried I have another jazz hands depression episode going on or something. Very low motivation. Very low exercise.

I do, however, have a lot of cheese in the fridge. Camembert, oka, some sort of thing with a friar on the front, smoked processed gouda, triple cream brie, fontina, the works. I'm waiting until tomorrow to dig into some of them because we're in a boil water advisory and I want to wait until we're off that before I wash the fruit I got with it for eating.

A few months ago I was at the coffee shop to finish a rapidly approaching overdue story for a fic exchange and noticed a poster for an upcoming ZineFest in town! A bigger city's comic group wanted to trial balloon something in our much smaller city to see if it could work. It had no url on it! At all! But I photographed the name and used the internet and found their instagram and their email and contacted their email because I had no instagram and got the url to their just made website which changed a week later! Anyway after much trial and error including 2 days of their sign up form not working until I discovered it would on the third browser I tried, I signed up for it!

And then waited a month or so for a response.

I got in!

I made all my zines, made stickers, packed up my Ceramic Objects, made a sign and day of we got there in plenty of time, had no problems at set up (minus needing to borrow some tape from the front desk of the art gallery where it was being held) and it went great!

I actually sold stuff! People wanted to buy my writing and my art! I made back the cost of everything! And I talked to so many people and the only bad part is I am one of those people who has to deliberately make facial expressions and it had been so long since I worked in retail I had forgotten the facial movements for a customer service smile and my brain was relaying to me that the muscle movements I felt weren't 'friendly smile' they were 'death rictus'.

But everyone was very nice, no horror stories at all! And it feels so amazing people wanted creative stuff I'd done, you have no idea!

In other news, the latest 'episode' of the Star Trek game I run finished. It was a Beach Episode with lots of Section 31 bullshittery where the players rolled as horribly as possible at every juncture. It was kind of beautiful. However, they got in some AMAZING character moments they hadn't before I would call the whole thing a massive success. The person I'm running these games for primarily and I are now planning the next episode with some very interesting stuff I have to keep under my hat for now.

The Cthulhu/Catthulhu game is going well. I'm managing good player participation, the modifications of the game are going well, and I decided to do a pretty bold move this session that really deviated from the module but got a clue across to the cats that I could not have had them discover otherwise. They also really liked my latest npcs - Pasta and Devil the hippy and military dogs, and Lucille the mangled but healthy and wellspoken cat who keeps/protects the murderous npc Bogdan.

Previous NPC successes were Wiggle and Squeak, the guinea pigs who thought that now their owner was dead, they were going to inherit the house. They had renovation plans. And Fraulein Hoffman, who to her and everyone else's surprise is not a cat but an opossum and possibly having an affair with Burgocat Hans.

I've been having trouble making Pathfinder comics lately, or even HamsterBandit Industries comics lately. I have a lot of pencils and scripts but actually committing to finishing has been tough. I'll wait for a 3 am manic period I guess.

I can't start making my big planned fry up breakfast for another hour (long story, not needed here) and I'm just staring at the clock while visions of tiny potatoes, fancy cheese, and eggs dance through my head.

I also keep thinking 'maybe I should go eat some ravioli' before realizing that would ruin that entire fry up's ability to be eaten. ALAS.

My mom's off participating in a dragon boat race in another province and we only just realized she was in such a hurry she forgot to leave us the streaming link so we could watch her race! I'm going to just sit here and hope she wins or places.

She isn't hugely competitive (neither am I) which came in really useful the other day when we went to a jigsaw puzzle contest as a team of two and all (but another parent/kid team) of the other teams were four people who led to us finding out there's speed puzzle clubs in town.

We placed dead last but we had a good time, beer, and nachos. I'm not a big puzzle person but I don't dislike them and I found it really soothing. Lot of convo about her (passed away) parents who loved puzzles so that was warm and fuzzy.

So my maternal grandparents loved puzzles. And I wanted to give them a gift to their interests! So I asked them what their favourite ones to put together were. And they said 'boats, water, lots of pieces'

Brilliant, I thought. My favourite art piece of the moment includes all those elements and so I got them a 1000 piece puzzle of The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa

My grandpa, upon opening it Christmas morning, looked up at me and said in the saddest voice: "I thought you loved us"

One of my favourite gift mistake stories, anyway! They appreciated me trying my best.

Man, I miss when they were both alive and well and they'd be staying over for a week and I'd make sure to get up at 6 am so I could sit at the kitchen table, drink coffee and watch their solitaire strategies. Grandma always had some insane anecdote and Grandpa was always very chill and serene.

Turns out my bff Elly whomst I watch mystery shows with (previously on x-men) has never seen Due South! This show is responsible for me enjoying mystery shows today, along with Warrick Brown of CSI.

Immediately I had a viewing plan in mind!

While I do enjoy seasons 1-2, Paul Haggis and his sex pest ways made anything involving women pretty rough, so immediately I decided all we'd watch of that was Pilot, 1st episode with the ghost of Fraser's father, and the flashback episode. Then we'd skip to the much more palatable (although shorter seasoned because it became a Canadian show starting then) s3-4 with New Ray.

DID YOU KNOW - that Due South has been on several streaming platforms so far and keeps changing them? It took me a while to finally find its current home on D+. I started with Netflix, Tubi, and Amazon before tracking it down.

It was not on the Canadian streaming service, Crave, afaik.

We also watched Kpop Demon Hunters (hope this doesn't awaken something in me) that was a real jam, Death Valley (delightful mystery show set in Wales all the Welsh accents I could want), and 2x Death In Paradise where I finally got on board with the Camille/Richard ship on the last episode before the final episode of season 2 and anyone who is familiar with the show to a certain degree probably just got a dark laugh.

My dad watches Death in Paradise and it's driven even him mad how the show's main plot is 'white british man comes and is the only person who can solve the mysteries of this colonized island, unlike the local black cops' which is kind of damning! However it's also very funny and Elly loves it, so here we are.

We picked up some new ones we might watch tonight too while I was trying to find some stuff - Dept Q (cold case show) and The Indian Detective (Canadian? show about a Canadian cop who goes to Mumbai to get involved in Mystery with his father) - just anticipating being done with Queens of Mystery and Death Valley soon because british seasons are a butterfly's sneeze in length.

Uh, what else. Got accepted into a Zinefest, have a lot of zines ready, why does it cost so much to print stuff oh my god why can't our home printer print double sided aaaaa. At least I'm 90% sure I won't make a ton of sales so I don't have to worry about being overstocked. I've got zines, I've got some stickers, and I'm gonna try to offload some of my ceramic animals unless Kevin the studio guy catches me and decides even though he's lectured me about how much I should charge for them before (he says 100, I say 10) he's going to actually enforce the no making things to sell rule (context: someone used the studio once as a factory for christmas ornaments and took up all the resources) - this is based less on actual fear of the rule because I know it's definitely not actually aimed at my use* and more on the fact Kevin is a chaos demon and I can never predict what he'll do for fun.



*I've asked a few times before and the studio guys go into a big oh I shouldn't worry because my stuff takes up so little room in the kiln that I probably use the least amount of any other user. My stuff is generally thumb size or smaller and in small batches.

I really need to have my eensy weensy breakdowns at times other than 5 am if I want to interact with another human being.

I couldn't even make a comic about it because I'd already made a comic about that exact situation already.

Anyway, the news is horrible (hate crimes, genocides), I have bad memories (no matter how old I get), and my province is on fire (and the only non-friend acknowledgement I've seen about it was an american warning the US-only about our smoke).

So this isn't a total whiny bummer and a sign I REALLY need to start keeping a paper diary again, I discovered that in my old computer files that I've been keeping since 2005, I have MANY quality vintage hamster pictures. Hell yeah.

Lord, I know I haven't been a good man, but I deserve some sort of reparations for the amount of people who argue with me when I'm not wrong or just repeat my point back at me, badly. Or worse, try to make a joke off my joke but theirs is a parasite that kills the original humour.

In other less pissy news:

Watched Strange World, the 2022 Disney animated movie I never saw advertised anywhere with my friend. We played our game of 'why did Disney bury this movie?' as we watched and found a bunch of examples which spoke well for the movie.

Further, the movie was interesting as it read as the evolution of the sci-fi genre - macho man white grandpa, sensitive but still colonial white son, equity and systemic minded black grandson and The Women Were Also There I Guess (I liked them but they did not get any arcs, which was frustrating but also, I suppose, a sign of the sci-fi metaphor).

Also Splat was like, the Chosen One on his own quest in there. That's my explanation for why he's the only blue one and how he leads to the heroes succeeding in their heroing.

Werewolf's delight.

There's been a bee plague in my home - we suspect that the orange belted bumblebees native to the area that also love our garden chose to winter overnight at our place and came out on the wrong side when leaving hibernation. We've been rescuing them from all over the interior of the house.

I recommend you image search them because they're lovely. They're huge too and they don't have hives.

There was also a queen wasp in my room but she wasn't aggro and sadly passed away on her own before I could get her out to safety because she wouldn't go where I could actually reach her. My arms are short. My body small. There is a reason I have chosen the hamster of my 30s animal, as the magpie was my 20s and the cricket my 10s.

Hey did you know I turn 40 this september? Some people here knew me when I was an actual kid.

I turned in my last fic assignment the other day, I'm not doing spring/summer term for school this year (nothing I could take), and I am kind of freaking out from having an empty quest log because it makes me think I'm forgetting a lot of important things when I go 'what should I be doing' and am returned with 'data not found'.