I very much agree with everything you wrote, but got briefly distracted by reading this as "social applesauce machines." I'm not sure what social applesauce is, but it sounds kind of gross and unappealing. For villainy and fresh apples!

The book really didn't do it for me, so I wasn't interested in the musical when it came out, but then I saw it in 2011 and it has stuck with me as the best thing I have ever seen. They are releasing a film version on November 22, and of course it won't be the same as a live stage production, but I am very excited to have it at my fingertips to watch as often as I please whenever I want.

EXACTLY. Our water was privitised in the late 80's so it's not exactly the current Tory lot to blame although it was of course Thatcher and it's at her teat they all suckled.  Sorry for the mental image.    When I was in Greece visiting D_R he was trying to manage my expectations of a beach we might visit and I had to explain to him that we literally dump turds in our sea, anything has to be better than that. 

You are also amazing. I love how much knowledge you have crammed into your brain. ❤️  Legume League sounds fun!   I will begin composition.    The “social applause machines” sentiment is exactly what I think I am rebelling against.  I have been the poster child of bright, easy to raise, patient, empathetic, self-sacrificing virtuousness for my entire life, and while that is certainly appreciated and lauded by those it benefits, it has had a host of drawbacks for me that have largely resulted in erasure or reductionism, as if all I am are those virtues rather than a whole person. I had deeply internalized those messages as all I was good for; that is, until my divorce, when I started unpacking that toxic load. But it was a lot and I am still carrying some of it around. More work to do, and some of that is letting go of getting the applause for my self-sacrifices. It’s hard to give up praise and set yourself up for criticism and rejection (when I started installing boundaries post-divorce there was significant pushback in some quarters who didn’t get it) but I know this will be worth it.   Your enthusiasm is so heartening. ❤️    Again, I love your brain. Thank you for this.    Hags and Legumes R Us?     This is so beautiful it made me tear up. Thank you, Heidi. ❤️❤️❤️ I think you are exactly right. 

Doc’s visit went great, my X-rays show complete healing and all I have to work on (“all”) is recovering range of motion and building strength back up after six weeks of sideline!! I got cleared to stop using the big old leg braces, although my physio says to keep on using walking sticks until I can walk normally. But walking normally should come a lot easier without those big heavy braces on (and they were so wide I had to waddle with my feet really far apart)😂    After meeting with the surgeon I had to hustle down the hall to the physio clinic, having booked appointments back to back. Cleared to bend and straighten my knees as much as possible, now I just have to work on accomplishing that! Did a bunch of long arc quad extensions accompanied by electric zapping, then tried bending my knees past 90 degrees - they went maybe a teeny bit past that, so I got to jump onto an exercise bike and do some spinning. Seriously, I was so happy at this point [I miss my real bike!] Then over to the leg press area and did some very gentle presses, which felt great. If all goes well this week I can ride my actual bike outside (the limiting factors will be getting onto it, as it’s not a step through frame, and reaction time for being able to brake and dismount as needed).   so that’s my big news, except also to note that losing the braces came JUST IN TIME as the weather here took a turn for the brisk and autumnal, and without braces I can swap the requisite short-shorts in favour of long pants! Woohoo!

It's what works best for me too. Can't eat unhealthy when nothing unhealthy is around. Except I have kids, and there's always unhealthy stuff around... 😇     I applaud anyone who can get through any of the Dark Souls games. With what I know of them, I'm not even going to try them. I'd get frustrated and quit within the first hour. No, I do NOT want to trial-and-error my way through every battle, it's a sure-fire way to make me go "nope" and quit. But that's the kind of gamer I've become over the years. I prefer the story more than the gameplay in most games, and I have no patience for grinding any more. Which is actually why PC games are a godsend. Need to "waste" an hour grinding money or XP? Just use an editor and save yourself an hour. Enemy encounters every five seconds? Fuck it, I'll play in "story mode" so I'm ridiculously overpowered. Let's assume I'm so badass that I easily win in all the "filler" fights. Or the others for that matter. Probably why I enjoy dialogue-heavy games most. And adventure games that are just exploration, puzzles and story. In the case of Dark Souls, it doesn't help that I've come to grow tired of dark fantasy themed games...   If it makes money, they'll beat it to death until it stops making money, and only then will they leave it alone.   There are many things that made me go "too much, I'm out". I've had my fill of superhero movies. The MCU for me ended with Endgame. Everything after that is just... Enough with the superheroes already!   Giving everything a series and then a spin-off series and then another spin-off prequel / sequel / interquel series???     Precisely the games I have zero interest in. 😇   Adventure games FTW! 😎   I was psyched to play this. Loved the first games, saw the raving reviews, decided to finally play Larian Studios' other games first... and didn't make it through Divinity: Original Sin because ugh, 100 hours, and ugh, dark fantasy again. It's been too much. I'm accepting that, no matter how interested I am in the games, I'll never get through the Witcher games (OCD won't let me start with the second or third game without playing the first one and after three attempts to get through it... ugh, another skeleton to beat, ugh, another vampire...), I'll never get through both Divinity: Original Sin or its sequel, and I'll never get through Baldur's Gate 3. So I'm not going to try. Cyberpunk 2077 on the other hand... 😇 At least that setting hasn't been beaten to death already.   I'm currently playing Hogwarts Legacy on the PS5. It's a bog-standard fetch-quest filled "basic" RPG where, once you've done all the exploring in Hogwarts itself, the only appeal left is it being in the Wizarding World. I'm not entirely sure I'll see it through to the end. It's not Horizon: Zero Dawn (and even that had me going "do I really want to put another 80+ hours into this?"), and it's DEFINITELY not Ghost of Tsushima.   I still have Spider-Man 2 and The Last of Us 2 on the PS5 backlog, though. And I'm playing Tennis Elbow 4 on PC at the moment, because it's the best sports game ever... 😇   Funny that, action games tend to get put on an easier setting as soon as I get tired of the fights or frustrated at the difficulty. Sports games tend to get put on a harder setting each time until I've found the most difficulty level I still have fun at...     ...aaand now I realise I made the entire post about me. Sorry about that. My neurodivergence is showing... 🙃

I think my next title might be Sovalis: Villain Era 1: Hag Vibes. It really is something that most dudes come to this kind of assertiveness without conscious effort. Bloody gender socialization.    Thank you! I am very excited about the cup and the arc.  ❤️    Thanks, Snarky! I am ready for a shift from “normal”. Maybe??? If you want to?? Banana!    I feel this in my bones. Thanks, Kishi.    Hi Mezzo! Thanks! We got most of the second coat done last night, so things should wrap up for keeps tomorrow night and then I can finally stop stressing! I am also curious. So hopefully we enjoy discovering it together. 😅 Right??? So pretty and the lavender colour was of course perfect for this challenge.    There’s a great novel “Villains By Necessity” by Eve Forward that I read in my teens and absolutely loved. It was basically restoring balance to the Force in a high fantasy setting. It lives on in my brain as a really good time. I wish I had a copy to re-read but I’d borrowed it from a friend and they are hard to find now. I think the insight into the shift in tone for the forums is interesting and I agree with you, it’s a different vibe now from when I was here the first time around.  I guess I need to see Wicked! I have heard a lot of the music and read most of the book, but the reading was years ago and I don’t recall any of it now. Homework!     Hi Friends!   No inaugural ritual last night, unless we count painting the lair, which I think I do. It is so close to done now and the colour saturation with the second coat is everything I wanted it to be. We even got the first coat on the north wall which had been just primer and we will do the second coat there on Thursday (it’s supposed to rain tonight) and then it will be done. We have so much paint left and I am relieved that we had too much rather than being short again. I’m not sure it will be enough to paint the shop, but it will get us on our way with that chore once we get to it. I am so grateful for Pete and his skills (he was an exterior house painter before joining the army) and his fluency with a ladder - he was up and down and dangling off that thing in ways that made me intensely nervous but was absolutely incredible. I don’t know that I trust my body enough for that (I certainly don’t trust ladders) but it was really inspiring to watch. We painted from 6-9:30 so there wasn’t time for dinner (I was late getting off work) but I wasn’t really hungry anyway, so I had a protein bar and some iced tea before bed and said good enough.    I had an intense dream about entering, hiding in, and being confined by incredibly restrictive physical spaces right before I woke up this morning. I was hiding from something or someone and thought I was safe there, but was so profoundly uncomfortable that I left and risked discovery rather than struggle to stay hidden. Holy metaphors, right? Hello, Villainy, I see you.    Today my introspection question was “Where do I need to be more honest with myself” and I pulled the Eight of Cups, a willingness to detach from people and the familiar day to day grind to foster self improvement, self understanding, and growth. The idea of excitement in the unknown and dealing with disappointment and escapism to generate the life you want. I found that my usual website (Biddy Tarot) didn’t really fit where I felt I was at with the analysis, but my backup (Labyrinthos) was pretty bang on. I am grateful for multiple resources as I am on this journey. Labyrinthos even mentioned caterpillars and I feel that impending dissolution of self as I emerge re-formed from this new evolution, especially because this change is a profoundly physical one. I feel like my mental and emotional self is farther along this path than my physical self, so it will be interesting to see the physical changes as I start to facilitate them. My daily draw card was The Star which felt very appropriate for the first day of the Villainy soft-launch: hope, inspiration, healing, courage. Holding a new sense of self, a new appreciation for the core of your being. Stripping back limiting beliefs, facades, deceptions. Good stuff.    Work today, then supper with the Boys, then Paint Night. It will be a good day. I have an extra hour at home this morning so I will try to get the dishes put away and maybe was the few we generated making spaghetti the other night. I have a feeling Lair Actions will be part of the challenge next round.    May your shower be the perfect temperature and pressure without you having to tinker with it too much. Thanks for being here. ❤️ 

Navy beans boiled with some bacon is an absolute delight. No wonder our depression-era ancesters were so capable and so fierce.   This is a superpower.  Here to cheer you on for this.   Maybe we need a Legume League ❤️  If you've not been eating legumes much, the first few weeks can feel a bit funky as your gut develops the right biome for digesting. My recommendation is to start with a cup or two of cooked beans a day at most while your body catches up to the nutrition. Barley and other grains help with this, as does vitamin c (the iron in beans needs vitamin c to digest and absorb). You don't have to buy a supplement or anything, just add some diced tomato or a handful of blueberries or whatever to the meal in some way. A cup of chopped kale is packed with vitamin c (80 mg), and I like to add some chopped red cabbage to mine (50 mg per cup). Throw in a diced tomato (17 mg per medium-sized fuit) and some broccoli (80 mg per cup) and slivers of red pepper (190 mg per cup, 1.5 times the green variety), and you have a beautiful, instagram-worthy salad that will knock your socks off and nuture your nutrition all day long. And if you're not opposed to white potatoes, they have as much vitamin c as a tomato does, and tons of potassium and B6 as well. Roasted white or sweet potatoes (lower Glycemic Index than white potatoes and lots of beta carotene) is a favorite comfort food of mine. I cut them into chunks and toss with olive oil, then sprinkle with salt and whatever fresh herb I have around -- rosemary, dill, parsley, whathaveyou. Bonus: Eating roots in the evening helps with sleep quality. Nature is amazing.   Ooooh, an official Origin Story. You know I'm here for this. 100% agree with Kishi. I'm all in.   Yes, I was just talking about this! I missThe Rebellion days, but moslty because I miss the Rebellion energy. Never forget that the Jedi were "the bad guys" that brought us "A New Hope" through Resistance.  I was talking with my daughter about how Stain in My Hero Academy was a complex villain that I liked, one whose message was that the status quo was broken and degrading regular people from acting in good ways for themselves, and that heroes had turned into social-applause machines and weren't really heoric at all anymore, and so they don't deserve either the title or the power they weild. Even the Joker was all about how the world had gone insane in its slavish adherence to rules that made absolutely no sense and were destructive. I want more of that, everywhere. Let's get Wicked.   PLEASE SAY YES THIS MAKES US YOUR MINIONS!!   This is so perfect for the Blue Sturgeon moon (in Aquarius, the sign of revolution for the collective good and personal breakthrough; expect the unexpected).  There's a nice aspect for this sort of work happening along with the full moon, a conjunction (direct alignment, looks like it is on top of or sitting right next to) with Saturn. Usually Saturn is considered the planet of NO, but I like the way Saturn brings us boundaries and structure, the scaffold that is necessary to enact our wildest dreams and schemes, and it brings our ancestral traditions with it, including all their power and authority. Also Mars is square (90 degrees, usually seen as an external push energy or pressure), which I think will give you just the right oomph to juice this in the direction you're after. Change requires courage-in-action, and Mars is beaming that right onto the full moon in buckets. See? I told you the Universe loves you and wants you to be happy.     Love that cup. Dang, if ever there were an autumnal theme for a challenge, this is it.  Also, having entered my HagDragon era, I highly recommend channeling this energy and letting it transform everything       I hope you're having a beautiful day, Sov. I am sending good thoughts for Dave's travels and for this revelation-under-the-full-moon villainy -- I'm honored to get to see behind the curtain as it begins (sort of a soft launch amongst your tribe). I like soft launches, generally, as it allows for a transition time, which often means a slight adjustment as we deepen into a new way of being. Can you believe we're in week four of this challenge already? Half a moon to gather tools and adjust your cap for villainy sounds just right. I love that you are painting your lair this challenge, sort of an "if you paint it, they will come" energy to inviting the villain in. You do so much with painting miniatures fo rthe worlds you build, I feel like the house painting is a macro analog to that, where you are the character you're building a world for and around. ❤️