I had a room mate once who had the john cena tune as his alarm and every day he would sleep through it for at least an hour.

Well done on these! Keep em coming. What have you been using for all your green plasma effects?

Oh sorry! I mean the witness trilogy by Steven Erikson. A follow up to malazan. The god is not willing was the first of the trilogy. Definitely a touch different stylistically but I really enjoyed the first one. Its Erikson so it’s a pretty long one so might be like what you’re looking for?

Also, Glenn cook released lies weeping, a new chronicle of the black company. I havnt read it yet, but its on my list. Might be worth checking out if you liked the stuff before!

Have you read the witness stuff yet? I read the first butbhavnt started the second yet.

Its definitely not the same scale, but I got into Glenn Cooks black company from malazan and loved it!

I’ve been holding off on short sun so I can really treasure the first read. Definitely a series I would wipe from my brain so I could read it fresh again haha.

Doing a reread of Book of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe with chapter by chapter with alzabo soup along side!

Looks like a pretty shitty prusik loop. Usually used in climbing or other ropes applications. A good prusik would be of a better rope quality and the knots would be more robust but same principle. More likely a summer camp bracelet of some kind.

Followed by…

There is increasing evidence that these drugs may increase the risk of stroke, but the evidence is often of differing quality and is observational only, meaning it is impossible to say whether the use of these drugs itself increases the risk of stroke, or whether this is purely a correlation.

I’ve kept some of my first ones too! The amount of cheap acrylic I have on them adds an extra point of toughness ;)

I love the look of blood angels! But I like how you’ve done the ultramarine scheme, nice and grimdark

Looking great! Have you decided on a chapter for your army yet?

Maybe its just my reading preferences, but I don’t know that I agree that they are optimistic generally speaking. A lot of what I have read tends to be either picking up the pieces from the fall of humanity or a warning on human arrogance and hubris. Usually you have some kind of humanity ending issue that gets resolved but usually has an element of sacrifice or loss in getting to that resolution. Ive always found sci fi to be a “this is how terrible it could be if we dont hande X issue correctly, but at least there will be people like the protagonist who will try and do the right thing”. I think if you took away that optimistic resolution to some of these plots, they wouldn’t be very compelling as a read. I think to more directly answer your question, these stories are often trying to make a point. Some of the ones I’ve enjoyed most tend to do a better job of incorporating the death by a thousand cuts you describe but are ultimately trying to say something about a specific issue. I think its also hard to argue that our modern time isn’t better than the past. That’s not to say its perfect or that there isn’t suffering, but if we were to describe our lives to someone from a thousand years ago, they might feel that our current world is fairly ‘optimistic’ as well.

This could definitely be some bias on my choices though so grain of salt lol.

Thank you! Purple is such a fun color to work with. The newer models have such great detail on the carapace. I tried a few different approaches but found just a simple bright grey dry brush always ended up looking better than anything else I tried.

To shreds you say…

Thank you! I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome. I was kinda just working with the paints I had on hand so ended up base coating with a slightly warm brown, valejo natural wood or something like that. Then I just added a little white at a time up to something flesh like. For the actual painting, I really tried to bring up the raised areas with the lighter shades while leaving the dark in the contours. I I used wyldwood contrast from citadel (a dark brown) like a wash around the eyes and cleaned things up with my previously mixed skin tone. The eyes wasn’t anything fancy, an off white, black and a steady hand. Getting the pupils lined up took a few tries, and I got them close but they are definitely not the same size on both. Fine enough on a table, but noticeable up close.

My Tyranids are purple, but gaunts are a pretty good way to practise anything organic/flesh and even with the different colours, the principles were all the same.

Looks like an osprey!