Beelphegor, The Soul Reaper

This model has frustratingly little lore. You can't just call something "The Soul Reaper" and not give it some kind of an epic backstory. Oh well. I don't usually paint bad guys unless it's for Warhammer 40,000, so this was a new one for me. The pose is cool, but the paint job itself was just ok. I wanted to do something with an ice and snow theme. It gave me some striking colors, but that's really about it. It's a bit of a one-trick model, I suppose. 

Completed: September 2020 

Painted with: acrylics and artist oils

Company: Andrea Miniatures 

 

Malory's Quest for the Holy Grail

Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory is not completely an original work. Instead, Malory compiled and edited together several different sources of Arthurian Legends into different books. One of the books, and the one that seems to have had the biggest impact, is the book that covers the quest for the Holy Grail.  

According to Malory, the quest for the grail is conducted by all the knights of the round table, but rather than being a joyous undertaking, it is actually quite grim. Most of the knights know that they will fail along the way, and even King Arthur knows that it will ultimately be the end of his fellowship of the round table.

Malory's other books had been about the triumph and prowess of the knights of the round table, but this book reminds us of something important: as good of knights as they may be, the round table is still made up of regular men. And like all regular men, they fail. In particular, they fail in their service to God.

It's worth keeping in mind that the Arthurian legends are not explicitly religious stories, but Malory's quest for the holy grail certainly is. It also doesn't make a lot of sense as a story if it isn't for that context, so it's important to go into. 

Ultimately, Malory's quest for the holy grail isn't so much about finding a holy object. In fact, there's actually nothing other than stories that are brought back to King Arthur's court. Instead, the story is one of healing, redemption, and ultimately reform. 

In Malory's work, a king who has been charged with the keeping of the grail is wounded in the thigh by the Spear of Longinus that pierced Christ's side. This is seen as divine vengeance for some unmentioned sin on the part of the king, and the wound never heals, preventing the maimed king from standing. Without his leadership, the lands around the castle of the maimed king suffer as well and become a wasteland.

The end of the holy grail story is when the king is restored to health and able to lead his lands once again. A divine punishment for sin is part of the story, but is not the end. Instead, the sinful, and thus wounded, king is healed by the blood of Christ which is still on the spear. The story is meant to symbolize the saving work of Jesus and the redemption from sin. 

But I also mentioned reform earlier. The knights that complete the grail quest are important, but so are the knights who fail along the way. Two of these in particular stand out in the story: Sir Gawain and Sir Lancelot. Sir Gawain, in addition to a host of other character flaws, is a murderer. That alone is mostly what prevents him from completing the grail quest, but in addition to that, he also refuses the chance to repent.

In Malory's characterization, Gawain is representative of a real problem in the round table. They are all, for one reason or another, men of bloodshed and evil, and this will ultimately lead them to destroy one another. Gawain is given the chance to change, but ultimately rejects it to continue in his evil ways. Gawain, thus becomes a symbol for unrepentant man, who, given a choice of redemption ultimately rejects it, leading to his failure in the quest. 

His foil in the story is Lancelot. Lancelot is also living in mortal sin. He appears to be the best knight in the world, and he is impossible to defeat in battle. But he's also sneaking around and committing adultery with the the king's wife. This prevents him from completing the quest. However, unlike Sir Gawain, when given the chance to change his ways, Lancelot chooses to repent. His evil ways still keep him from the quest, but Lancelot comes to represent those who turn away from evil. 

Both Gawain and Lancelot return to the court of King Arthur, but they bring options with them. The court can continue in it's evil the way Sir Gawain does, or they can reform like Lancelot. Meanwhile, Sir Percival and Sir Galahad complete the quest, heal the maimed king, and redeem the land. The story ends a little abruptly, but it ends here because it is a quest for holiness and redemption. Both are achieved by only two of the 150 knights that went out on the quest. The question then, is how will the other knights respond? Do they follow Lancelot's example or Gawain's?

The Arthurian legends end in tragedy. The book is called The Death of Arthur, after all. It's easy to guess what the round table ultimately chooses. Gawain's presence continues to poison the fellowship of the round table. Lancelot backslides. It all ends in sorrow, but that is a story for another day.

Lazarus

Diomedes was a great commander, warrior, and friend of The Kyrios, but all that changed after The Kyrios began to listen to the vague whispers of The Emissary, a strange being who hinted at great powers. However, the quest for power requires sacrifice. So The Kyrios struck down his friend, Diomedes. That was not to be the end of the story for Diomedes. The Emissary had plans for him and so he was reborn as the hero, Lazarus, and set upon a path to vengeance. 

Completed: August 2020 

Painted with: acrylics, enamel metallics

Company: Cerberus Studios  

The World According to H.P. Lovecraft

I recently finished listening to the complete fiction of H.P. Lovecraft as an audiobook. It's a total of 51 hours and 40 minutes of content, but it is well worth the listen, especially if you're like me and you appreciate the occasional spooky or paranormal story. 

The vast majority of Lovecraft's fiction is made up of forgettable, pulpy novels and horror stories, but there are certainly some gems mixed in there too. I don't want to review the man's entire body of work because that would end up being an entire book. Lovecraft was a prolific writer, and produced a lot of work despite his relatively short life. 

So instead of reviewing all of his fiction, I wanted to talk about one of the major themes that ties all his books together: racism. Just kidding. There is a lot of that in his writing, but you can also find racial critiques of Lovecraft everywhere. I would add nothing to the discussion if I wrote about that. Instead, I'd like to focus on Lovecraft's horror itself. 

The main element of horror in Lovecraft's writing is that the world is not ours. This idea seems quaint today given things like deep ecology, various environmental movements, and general postmodern cynicism about human life, but in his context, the idea would have been more shocking. Basically, Lovecraft took humanity out of the center of the universe and said that nothing revolves around us. Instead, the universe revolves around a sleeping, dreaming, and ultimately uncaring (and possibly evil) deity.

The horror of H.P. Lovecraft isn't so much the fact that there are monster out there in an strange and exotic world. That certainly is frightening to the characters involved. The real horror, however, is that the world itself doesn't actually belong to regular men and women. Instead, it was made by and for the monsters. According to Lovecraft, The old ones were here before us, and they will be here after us. As for humanity, we exist as little more than a cosmic joke or accident. 

It's an incredibly dim view of humanity, but there is a little redemption here. I'm not convinced Lovecraft held that view. Instead, I think he presented it as horror because a world that doesn't care about human life is a terrifying place. He shows us what the world is like or can be like when we become overly cynical about ourselves. In other words, Lovecraft might have a lot to say in response to our current post-humanist philosophies.

Much of this view came from his historical context. Lovecraft would have been in his twenties during World War I. And he would have seen much of the blatant disregard for human life that was going on at the time. He died before World War II, but he must have been able to see where that particular issue was going. These things must have had an effect on his fiction and surely influenced it. There are a number of times where his protagonists are described as having fought in the great war, so it was clearly on his mind throughout a lot of his fiction. I don't think he was directly responding to the horror of World War I in his writing. However I do think that the disregard for human life that he would have heard about helped shape the way he wrote and helped create the horror in his writing. 

Does this mean that Lovecraft was a perfect example of humanist thinking? No, of course not. See the note on his racism above. He was very much a man of his time and he had all the flaws and bad thinking that would have been around at the start of the 20th century. Still, if we think through the ideas, Lovecraft has an important message for us: a world where we stop caring about humanity is a world full of horror and darkness. It's an old message, but it's one that bears repeating again and again.

Cosmic Crusader Champion

I happened across this miniature while I was scrolling through Instagram hashtags one day. Unfortunately, there is no lore for the miniature. I usually put that here in my posts. Since there's no lore, I'll just explain some of the thinking that went into the model. First off, the main thing that got me was the pose. The knight pulling back to strike like this looks awesome, and it makes the painting a little easier to do as well. There isn't a lot that's hidden or hard to reach with a paintbrush, so it made the painting nice and quick.

The paint scheme itself was pretty much just a random idea I had a while ago. I'd been wanting to do something with a background, and I'd been wanting to paint something that moved away from realistic depictions of soldiers. Between those two wants, I decided to make it look like this guy was some kind of cosmic, space knight. I was quite pleased with the results. In fact, this was so fun to paint that I got another miniature from the same line in a different pose. Maybe one day I'll collect all of them.

Completed: July 2020 

Painted with: artist oils

Company: Reaper 

Corvo Attano

Corvo Attano is the Royal Protector, or main body guard, to Empress Jessamine Kaldwin of Dunwall. Or at least he was until the Empress was murdered in a plot to seize the throne, and he was framed for the murder. After spending several months in Coldridge Prison, Corvo escapes with the help of the loyalist conspiracy and helps them out as an assassin. On the way he meets with the outsider, a mysterious demigod who grants Corvo supernatural powers. With these powers and his skill with a sword, Corvo uncovers a plot against the Kaldwin family and helps bring the conspirators to justice. 

This is, of course, an *ahem* unofficial model that is totally not Corvo Attano. Any resemblance is pure coincidence I assure you. As for my writing, well, I totally just wanted to write a brief blurb about Corvo. No relation at all to the miniature. 

Completed: March 2020 

Painted with: acrylics, enamel metallics

Company: Artel W. Miniatures. 

Mephiston Lord of Death

Mephiston is the chief librarian of the Blood Angles chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. He is one of the strongest psykers in the Imperium, but despite his prowess, he is also looked at with skepticism by many of his battle brothers. He is one of the only Blood Angels to recover from the Angel's flaw known as the Black Rage. Although he fell to the rage in battle, through the might of his mind, he was able to recover. But there are those who wonder exactly what he did to overcome the Black Rage. Whatever it was, he was certainly changed. He fell as brother Calistarius but was reborn as Mephiston. Though some have their doubts about Mephiston, for many of the Blood Angels, he is a symbol of hope. If he was able to come back from the Black Rage, maybe there is a chance for others who have fallen to the flaw.  

Completed: March 2020 

Painted with: acrylics, enamel metallics

Company: Games Workshop

Death Guard Kill Team

In the Warhammer 40,000 universe, there is little that is more terrifying than the Death Guard. These former space marines fell during the Horus Heresy, and made a pact with the chaos god of plague and entropy. Ever since, they have been known as the Plague Marines, a force that fights not merely with sword and bolter, but with all the plagues of their virulent patron God.

These are actually some of the very first models I ever built and painted. They hold a special place in my heart, and really set the tone for some of my overall style choices with regards to my current painting. That said, there is a lot that I would do differently now. I still like the color scheme, but I would seriously change my shadows and highlights. Those were concepts I just didn't get when I was a few months into mini painting. Now, with much more experience behind me, I could do a lot better. 

I don't really have any intentions of repainting these though. They will live on as the first miniatures I ever finished. 

Completed: Some time in early 2018 

Painted with: acrylics

Company: Games Workshop

Categories

I filled out the 2020 census yesterday. For anyone who doesn't know, that's one of many silly, unnecessary wastes of time that the U.S. government puts us through every so often. My opinions on the way that government wastes people's time aside, the census does have a few thought provoking questions on it. 

These mainly revolve around ethnicity. For my part, I'm just not sure these are useful categories for counting anything. Here's what I mean: in terms of ethnicity, I'm a whole hodgepodge of different things. I've never done a lot of ancestry searching, but from what I know from older relatives, my family has never really stuck with one ethnic group. Instead, they've married and had kids with people all over. All that is to say that in terms of family relationships, I don't have a great answer for what ethnicity I fall into.

So what do I go with? DNA? My parents took one of those tests, and all that did was reflect what I already knew about where my family is from. That isn't useful either.

Now I should mention, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about who I am in terms of ethnicity. Maybe you could say I have the privilege not to think about it. Maybe you could say it's just not as important to my identity as other things. Either way, I don't really think about it all that much until I'm asked to step into a particular category of people. And whatever the category, it's an uncomfortable fit. 

And that's why I wonder if these categories are even useful any more. For a category to work, there needs to be clear, defining distinctions that make a thing actually fall within that category. Think of something like screwdrivers, for example. A flat head and a Phillips head screwdriver are in different categories because they have clear distinctions between them. It's a dumb example, but the category for those tools is useful because they are put to different purposes and we need that category for distinguishing between them. 

But you can't take that thinking and apply it to the infinitely more complex thing that is humanity. I mean, you can try, but those distinctions are pretty meaningless these days. But what do I know? Maybe the various family lines that bring a person into existence are really important to some people. Maybe I would feel differently about it if I wasn't three generations removed from the people that immigrated here from other countries.

I'm also not clueless about what's going on in the world. I am aware that these questions are really sensitive for people right now. I just wonder if all of this categorization for people helps or hurts the way we think of ourselves. It's not an easy question to answer. That said, I'm personally skeptical of the census and its questions. It all seems very unnecessary. 

Maximus Decimus

Maximus Decimus is the fictional roman general from the movie Gladiator. This movie is a favorite of mine, so even though the miniature has been out of print for several years now, I wanted to have it. After a long time of lurking on eBay I was able to find a listing that wasn't a recast. It was a long wait, but I would say it was worth it. 

Completed: April 2020

Painted with: artists oils, acrylics, enamel metallics

Company: Latorre Models

Watch Captain Artemis

Artemis is a Deathwatch captain originally of the Mortifactors chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. He was recruited by the Deathwatch after they took notice of his keen abilities at fighting off xenos incursions, and his first conflict as a member of the Deathwatch was against the Tyranids. Outside of the lore, this model is from the discontinued Inquisitor game. It is in 54mm scale, and is one of only a few models Games Workshop ever made in this scale. Unfortunately, the 54mm game never caught on, so these are really only available after some strenuous ebay hunting, which is exactly how I acquired this model.

Completed: May 2020

Painted with: artists oils, enamel metallics

Company: Games Workshop