Fingers crossed that this greenstuff alone solution will do the trick. Perhaps I should have added super glue in first.

I used a soft tipped ‘clay shaper’ tool to sculpt the greenstuff and I used saliva on the tool to keep it from sticking to the epoxy putty.

I mixed equal parts blue and yellow, nothing fancy.

I rolled a tiny snake out of GS between my fingers and then stuck it into a drill hole. Once I got enough into the slot I broke the snake off and then went about smushing the greenstuff into and around the hole with my shaper tool.

Remember to let GS dry for a long time, like 24 hrs at least. It takes awhile to harden into its final form even though it starts to harden within the hour of mixing it up.

#hobbystreak day 31

Inspired by the podcast Trapped Under Plastic, let’s see my TRUE WIPs, warts and all.

Let’s start with good news. I painted up this wraith’s sword and gauntlets and I think its coming along in the right direction. I got a little crafty with the recipe.

All credit due to youtuber Ninjon for inspiring me to mix colors into my metallic paints.

In his video he mixes gray paint and some other colors into a bright aluminum colored metallic paint to get darker shades. Me, not having dark shades of metallics on hand (despite me trying to buy a dark shade of metal… turns out scale 75 ‘heavy metal’ is pretty dang bright), decided to give this mixing method a try.

But I used black ink to mix instead of grey paint.

At first I got a dark grey that I used as a base coat for the metal on the ringwraith. But as the ink and paint solution sat on my palette the ink overtook the paint’s natural silver hue and I ended up with glittery black. Could be good for something else but not what I wanted here.

To highlight the metal on the ringwraith I used straight up heavy metal. Edge highlighting is still new to me so I laid down the heavy metal with caution on the sword edges. And then I went for the ridge in the center and laid down a big ugly streak of paint by accident.

To compensate for my mistake and for the fact that heavy metal looked way too bright next to the black metal, I kinda swiped heavy metal messily along the blade to imitate scratch lines and ended up with a visually textured surface that pleased my eye. Overall still too bright but when I hit it with some washes I think it will end up looking just right.

For my next wip I played with drybrushing red onto a couple of my starry night guardians to see what happens and.. well I’m less than thrilled with the results.

I tried to mitigate the red by glazing navy over it but it didn’t do much to it.

#hobbystreak

The good news is I succeeded in getting the magnets out. The bad news is there was some collateral damage along the way to that end.

I looked far and wide (on the internet) for a solution that didnt involve putting new holes in the plastic. i tried stabbing a pin into the crack between the magnet and the plastic to lever it out, I put the magnets in the freezer, but in the end I resigned myself to the fact that damaging the arms was a cost I could accept to get these magnets out of their sockets.

I read that drilling at an angle to the magnet is best so I did that with all the arms. I also put them in the freezer for 24 hours first, since I read that the freezer can make super glue brittle.

Every magnet came out with the drill method.

The biggest room this method has for improvement in my opinion is that I wish I had some kind of net down to catch the magnets as they popped out. Some went flying but luckily none fell on the floor.

#hobbystreak

Note: I mentioned before I might try a soak in “super clean” to undo the glue but after I watched Goobertown Hobbies’ video on super glue where he demonstrated that super clean doesn’t actually dissolve the glue, I didn’t pursue that strategy further. Ive read people claim that the cleaner at least softens the glue but seen no demonstrations to back it up.

Oh Wile E., why must you get cynical about a silly sci fi book? Why can’t you just enjoy it?

I can have some fun and remain critical.

For one this book has given me perspective on the cognitive dissonance baked into the depiction of the imperium of man. Like the very first page tells you that this regime is the most horrific thing you could imagine ruled by a corpse on life support powered by human sacrifice.

Kinda makes you think the imperium are villains here.

But then read on to find the imperium’s posterboys, the Ultramarines, being called heroic and noble and just rulers. Same guys that work for the decaying “carrion” emperor and his brutal dictatorship.

And then read on page 18 that in the imperium, “Even the most equitable of rulers needs must become an oppressor if they hope to keep their people alive.”

So I feel conflicted over whether this kind of writing serves as propaganda excusing parallel national defense efforts in the modern day or whether the absurd circumstances of the imperium satirize the modern national defense. I think it depends how you look at it.

On the one hand the imperium is literally under siege by armies that can’t be reasoned with and seem to want the destruction of humanity. E.g. the space bug army of tyranids that want to eat everything (they “have but a single purpose and desire: to feed” [172]) and/or mutate everything into a tyranid. So in this context the stakes are literally fight back or die. Maybe diplomacy with the hive mind could get developed one day but in the meantime the imperium sees fit to stave off the tyranid threat with war.

Here a military state gets justified, but justified because of extreme unreal circumstances which only mirror modern day justifications if you believe the enemies of your country are unreasonable monsters. which in America… well it seems like many buy into that demonization if the other rhetoric, hence the widespread racism across our history and the recent wave of discrimination against Muslims (or anyone who could be mistaken for Muslims).

But even in this scenario where humanity must fight or get eaten, how does it follow that all rulers must oppress their citizens to ensure their survival? The book gives the justification in vague terms that since each imperium planet can get isolated and beset by invaders, these circumstances necessitate oppressive government. Again we must admit that the circumstances of the imperium are unprecedented. And yet I cannot help but suspect that someone who thinks desperate situations naturally lead to oppression shows a lack of creativity. I encourage these authors to look into some real world stories of peaceful resistance to Nazis in World War 2 for evidence that fascism has been undermined without violence – see Denmark as a case study. But I recognize that for a wargame company such stories don’t sell plastic tanks the same way war stories do.

So fine, let’s imagine a world where militarization really does hold the key to survival. Even in that world I can imagine a government that doesn’t oppress their subjects. And apparently the authors do too becuase they call the Ultramarines just rulers in this very same book they say all the rulers must oppress people in? Does that mean the ultramarines oppress people but like in a noble way? Noble oppression to me is a contradiction.

Hence I think this telling of the imperium is inherently dissonant for me, at odds with my own understanding of justice. And I know enough people believe in the ends justify the means nature of the military state that I suspect the 40k authors might buy into that as well. This saddens me.

I am reminded of the documentary Citizen Four, a record of Edward Snowden’s reveal of US government mass surveillance. And in that doc a speech by then president Obama plays of him saying that in order for America to be free it had to sacrifice some privacy. That security and privacy were mutually exclusive. I think this rhetoric is disgusting. A rationalization of government overreach and a sign of paternalism in our ruling class.

So there. My thoughts on 40k logic. For reference to understand Wile E.’s politics or something.

#hobbystreak