Wait

One year I mentioned I needed a new hobby knife - you know, the cheap little scalpel things you use to get your space marines off the sprue. Over the next three years my gran got me increasingly elaborate sets. At one point I counted and found I had 104 blades, plus a half dozen handles they could fit on.

"The best thing we can do with power is give it away" - On the leftist critique of superhero narratives as authoritarian power fantasies:

The ongoing "Jason Todd is a cop" debate has reminded me of a brilliant brief image essay by Joey deVilla. So here it is, images first and the full essay text below:

"A common leftist critique of superhero comics is that they are inherently anti-collectivist, being about small groups of individuals who hold all the power, and the wisdom to wield that power. I don’t disagree with this reading. I don’t think it’s inaccurate. Superheroes are their own ruling class, the concept of the übermensch writ large. But it’s a sterile reading. It examines superhero comics as a cold text, and ignores something that I believe in fundamental, especially to superhero storytelling: the way people engage with text. Not what it says, but how it is read. The average comic reader doesn’t fantasize about being a civilian in a world of superheroes, they fantasize about being a superhero. One could charitably chalk this up to a lust for power, except for one fact… The fantasy is almost always the act of helping people. Helping the vulnerable, with no reward promised in return. Being a century into the genre, we’ve seen countless subversions and deconstructions of the story. But at its core, the superhero myth is about using the gifts you’ve been given to enrich the people around you, never asking for payment, never advancing an ulterior motive. We should (and do) spend time nitpicking these fantasies, examining their unintended consequences, their hypocrisies. But it’s worth acknowledging that the most eduring childhood fantasy of the last hundred years hasn’t been to become rich. Superheroes come from every class (don’t let the MCU fool you). The most enduring fantasy is to become powerful enough to take the weak under your own wing. To give, without needing to take. So yes, the superhero myth, as a text, isn’t collectivist. But that’s not why we keep coming back to it. That’s not why children read it. We keep coming back to it to learn one simple lesson… The best thing we can do with power IS GIVE IT AWAY." - Joey deVilla, 2021 https://www.joeydevilla.com/2021/07/04/happy-independence-day-superhero-style/

Black asexuals of tumblr (from the UK and Ireland), I need you...

to fill out a questionnaire about asexual tv/media representations, what you think about them, and what they could be doing better. Almost all questions are optional, so you can come and say as little or as much as you'd like!

Please help a fellow ace out, and help me make this research not be just another look at white asexuals...

Go to https://tinyurl.com/acetvquestions or the link in my bio

Please share, even if you don't wanna do the questionnaire, many thanks!

You should play Tactical Breach Wizards, the only game that feels the need to, in a dream sequence, reassure one of the characters that play testers like them as people, even after fixing the balance issues.

Look, Rion. The only way I know to knock Liv off this incredibly tall building is to chain-lightning through her and her intended swap target. I tried to arrange it so she was the only one to get knocked off, but that just wasn't an option. Yours was a necessary sacrifice, and it honestly wasn't even that sacrifice-ey. Banks shot you in the head and brought you back to life. She even undid all the damage your lungs took from brellium calcite, so honestly you're doing better than if I didn't knock you off the roof!

Huh? Why did I need to knock Liv off the roof? Don't ask stupid questions!

Been working on my Necrorando collection, making fun little folk to hang out in the underhive. Most recently I have painted an auto-scrivener (unnamed) and a mutant Bounty Hunter ('the Rat-Catcher'), and built an ex-Escher Rogue Doc mixing AoS and Necromunda bits. Particularly happy with the Auto-scribe's scroll-work. Nothing fancy since the writing is all sculpted detail on the original model, but a few drops of red ink have done a lot of work!

Last pantheon I made up for a game, I just said "screw it" and made said Gremlin one of the Creator Gods. "This is [Space], who gives things a place to happen, [Time], who permits things to change, and this is [Chaos] who makes sure it isn't boring." Dozens of lesser divinities of course, but the Three are a statuesque angel with clock for a halo, a star-filled void with a nebula for a heart, and a giggling rodent who treats the world as her personal AO3.

I think what I love most about mythology is that the “Trickster God/Spirit” is an archetypical character found in almost every body of folklore. It’s like “Oh, here’s our God of the Sun, our God of the Sea, our God of Fertility, and our God of Being A Wretched Little Gremlin Who Causes Problems On Purpose”

after careful consideration, i decided that meow meow meow meow meow

sao fans invented a personality for kirito that he’s literally never had and then call reki a bad writer for… writing him with his real personality

Having a bit of fun making hangers-on for my Necromunda gangs.

Sextus Udo is the rogue doc assisting Hark and Nav (my Locked Tomb themed Escher gang).

Knot Toogrots is a totally normal human fungus farmer.