#anyhow they *literally* make these guys. good lord. howling.

[scrawnytreedemon]

just to summarise a little thang i've been writing. very unlikely to show it, but!

idk i hope this note amuses you, lmao.

[thebigreylotheory]

Conning Dragons and Forcing Friday (all month long!)

Soooo…how is it the end of September now? (maybe I listened to that Green Day song a little too closely back in the day. We could make it Star Warsy: “Force Awakens When September Ends” (and buy/by that I mean I hope there’s a trailer soon)).

Just.Not.That.One.

Anywho here’s the Force Friday II post (better late than never). Which according to one Target chat customer service rep never happened!

When I buy $50 worth of SW figures I want my giftcard spam you very much so I can buy more SW stuff. I should have asked this guy about the moon landing and unicorns, too. But I have healed my Kylo Ren-esque rage against it and am ready for better adventures now (porgs included, thank you giftcard).

Labor Day was a crazy weekend, as it was Force Friday II (unless I AM delusional) and Dragon*Con. Cosplaying at a convention has been on my bucketlist for while. It was always one of those things I was gonna do when I lost weight cause I’m intensely extremely shy. So over 100 pounds gone later it’s time to throw myself out of the comfort zone.

You know the saying: something old, something new, something borrowed, something Skywalker blue. I’m told this ship could make the Kessel run, but I wouldn’t know cause I drive slow just like my grandma taught me. Revenge of the Rey-the-Duck look.

Naturally, at first, we thought Caps should be beardy-Ren, again, from Halloween. But helmeted black costume + Atlanta weather + driving to and forth + large crowds = didn’t seem to mix for us.

(Yes, Rey just LOVES gardening. Nightbloomers and Spinebarrels and all.) So, anyhow, Caps opted to be Lukey-Pooh instead, but still gave me Howl’s-Moving-Castle-type-melt-downs by trimming the beard claiming the natural, beautiful white made him look old. #poshhusbandproblems

I’m going to spray him down with the dark side asap.

Here’s to hoping we didn’t creep people out too badly by holding hands. You KNOW I’m Reylo. Said it right there on my badge. (And as much as I could do Star Wars: Middlemarch, I’m not. That is the longest novel ever. Lit-erally.) I tried to stay in character the whole time and complain about people taking my hand and why Master Skywalker is so overprotective. Once, briefly, in the crowd, a Kylo Ren randomly walked next to us. I got the silent-introvert-girl-giggles real bad. Out of costume, I accidentally bumped into a Hoth Leia and discussed a lost bus card with a blonde Hutt Slayer Leia. Good times with Leias!

Although we missed out during SW Celebration, we did get to see Peter Mayhew! I was in awe. Literally, I felt a bit emotional. Just so nostalgic, thinking, wow, if you’d told me when I was ten years old some day I’d be in the same room as the actor who played our beloved Chewie. My cousins used to tease me for making Chewbacca noises. Well, "RRWWWGG" on them now.

Also saw Daniel Logan! He’s grown up, makes me feel old. I remember watching Clones and thinking aww it’s lil Boba, cause I was such a sophisticated teenager. He has a great sense of humor. Should do comedy. Told the most hilarious story about not knowing whom Christopher Lee was at first.

Later that Friday, saw TONS of SW authors. Kevin J. Anderson, Timothy Zahn, Michael Stackpole, Myke Cole, Claudia Gray, E.K. Johnston spoke on Masculinity in Star Wars. (Zahn was late cause he doesn’t ask for directions, direct quote.) The topic was dad-heavy. As a Reylo, I shifted uncomfortably in my seat (the old phrase: sinner in church, comes to mind) when it was suggested Lukey-Pooh is you-know-whom’s Papa. Authors did not confirm or deny, Disney lawyers probably had the mics tapped.

"Yes, this is a [fan convention], and we have many tapestries. But if you are a Scottish lord, then I am Mickey Mouse!" – Indiana Jones butler dude

Immediately following, Claudia Gray & Delilah S. Dawson had their awesome book launch party for Leia, Princess of Alderaan and Phasma. I am the biggest book nerd and have been hanging on all the new canon.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any autographs because that evening I rapidly came down with a con-crud-cold with fever. And I didn’t want everyone to hate me for spreading germs and delaying any future books. So I went home, took other people’s medicine, and drowned my cooties with hot coffee, tea, and honey.

Yeah, Sith happens...

Mother-in-law got so concerned about me, she went Force Friday-ing without knowing it to buy Get Well gifts:

From my sick bed, ok couch, here’s what I ordered online Force Friday:

Target hasn’t sent me my Luke, yet. Is this foreshadowing for the movie??

Here was our more-like-Force-Monday-finds:

Toys R Us loops the teaser trailer continuously!

“Not a creature was stirring, not even a Porg”

Porg, totally took a nose dive off the birdfeeder after this shot..

And more-like-Force-two-three-weeks-later-buys:

Well, of all the strange places, I found Lukey-Pooh at Kroger. Guess he was hungry.

My Dragon*Con souvenirs*:

*Authors note: artists are not specifically associated with Reylo-ing to my knowledge, featuring here cause I generally love their Star Wars work.

Framing soon from Cryssy Cheung!

Someday I want the bigger version!! AH!

Fun weekend, despite being sick.

[jakey-beefed-it]

While those are legitimate concerns, and the hobby necessarily has a problem with privileging people with money over those without, there are a couple things to consider.

1.) This is a ruling specifically for the Las Vegas Open, a major competitive tournament in the United States. It’s not binding anywhere else, and no one is proposing that your friendly local game store take up such a harsh stance.

2.) If anything this is meant to counter people who just spend a bunch of money chasing the meta- they’ll have a bunch of hastily thrown-together models from different sources which will likely have varying bases and color schemes. The archetypal “that guy” player who doesn’t care how his army looks and just wants to win at all costs is the sort of person this is meant to undermine. The sort of person who turns up at, say, the Las Vegas Open with an army they’ve only put together for competitive purposes.

It’s up to each individual tournament to decide where they want to fall on the scale of ‘we only care about competition in the game itself and you could bring a bunch of proxy models for all we care’ to ‘everything must be painted to a high and consistent standard because we want this event to be visually stunning and the games are kind of an afterthought’. LVO has decided to position itself more toward the latter. Other tournaments will vary widely.

Yes, GW has recently begun pushing ‘battle ready’ for its own events. This is, however, a fairly low standard that literally anyone can achieve and no one has to so long as they don’t care about participating in GW-run events. 

For those of us who love the hobby aspect of painting your army to look like a unified force on the tabletop- including me and my Craftworlders! -this sort of ruling is encouraging because while I’m unlikely to ever end up at top table in a competitive event, I could go to the LVO and at least know that some of the other folks there would be hobby-first folks who would enjoy talking shop about painting and modeling, and I might actually have a good time, which is pretty much the opposite of my usual tournament experience.

Because I mentioned Craftworld Aeldari/Asuryani/Eldar specifically and that’s been a concern posed previously, let me just say that everyone I know with a craftworld army at least ties them together through basing or transfers. My own army, regardless of aspect, involves some measure of a nebula-strewn starfield, and/or the colors purple, white, and gold. I could paint my dire avengers dark blue with white helmets, but they’d have the same style base, with the same color rims, as my fire dragons or my howling banshees, and the flowing cloth would all be starfields, and the gems would all be the same color across the craftworld. Aspect shrines are cool! And a fun way to mix up the paint scheme! But it’s still gotta look kinda like a consistent army, you know? Bases are the really critical area for that imo; at least make them look like they belong on literally the same battlefield together.

I actually have an army that’s much likelier to run afoul of this ruling! My chaos space marines are run as Black Legion, despite being painted in the colors of all nine classic Chaos Legions- my Terminators are Black Legion (as is Abaddon obviously), my Havocs are Iron Warriors, my close combat CSMs are World Eaters, my ranged CSMs are largely Alpha Legion, my Raptors are Night Lords, my Dark Apostle and Greater Possessed are Word Bearers, etc. etc. But they’re all on the same cracked stone and magma bases, and they all use the Black Legion rules because they’re meant to represent a full-on Black Crusade. 

If I brought it to the LVO, I think they’d probably say it’s fine given that it’s pretty clearly the same army painted by the same dude (me) with matching bases and a strong theme. But if they didn’t? I’d be disappointed, sure, but it’s their tournament, and their ruling.

Anyhow things to remember for folks getting angry about this ruling:

1.) It’s one specific tournament and you don’t have to go to it

2.) No one is targeting you personally unless you just put together an army you bought from several sources on ebay because you’re personally chasing the meta to take to Las Vegas to pwn some noobs who care too much about the way their tiny spacemans look, in which case, okay, yeah, this is targeted at you because they don’t want you at their tournament, so go to a different one

3.) It’s intended to reward those folks who have lovingly collected and painted an army in their own way, not punish them.

Look, I’m as prone to getting worked up over wee plastic soldiers as the next grognard, but I really do think this situation is not at all the travesty it’s being made out to be and we’d all benefit from taking a breath and shrugging it off and just going back to doing our own hobby our own way.

I am onboard!