#not to mention there's a lot of Warhammer in this world's worldbuilding.

[morrigan-sims]

baby's first mesh edit!

(thank you SO MUCH to the incredible @aniraklova for extracting the original mesh from Borderlands 2 for me and enabling my dreams...)

I'm definitely gonna be recoloring it to match the desert color scheme, make the blue power cells orange to match Cyra's key, and if my DM gets back to me, add a faded/scratched out Empire symbol on the side panels. After that, it's set building and render time. :))

original mesh plus top view under the cut

and a top view so you can see that I actually moved the control deck.

Before:

and after:

[angieschiffahoi]

Before I start Harrow, I want to share my thoughts on Gideon.

 Spoilers ahead.

While I don’t believe it was the greatest book ever written, it was perfectly fitting for me.

The genre: It was a mix between sci-fi and fantasy, very simple in its worldbuilding, it didn’t shy from some exposition (I hate new fantasy books that don’t use exposition at all... you’re not that good at the spreading the information thingy, I don’t understand your overly complicated worldbuilding!) and used it in pretty much conventional ways. It didn’t invent every single tiny little thing (which I find very annoying in modern fantasy and sci-fi books - let your MC say fuck), but mixed things familiar with our world with future/innovative elements, almost seamlessly. Thank you, Tamsyn, for using insults we know (I understand why TV shows do it, it’s to keep a PG-13 rating and still use swear words, but I find it insufferable when books try to invent terms for everything... even pens or bread). 

I’ve seen people say it is heavily sci-fi and I disagree. It is not hard sci-fi in the slightest and the magical/necromantic elements are a lot more technical than any of the technology, which was basically non-existent (at times I was stunned whenever they mentioned anything that was “modern” or techy, since it felt like fantasy 80% of the time). The author built a magic system and tried to fit it into a sci-fi setting. It very much resembled Warhammer 40k at times (come on, the Undying Emperor?) and had they mentioned Chaos Gods every now and then, I would have believed this was a WH 40K novelette a-la Blackstone Fortress.

The plot: Gay necromancers in space, with a plot similar to And Then There Were None which at times felt a little bit like Catching Fire as well (Tamsyn, did you read my diary?). It was very simple, straightforward and the fact that we only had one narrating voice made it very easy to read and to follow along. The fact that it was a bit cinematic is probably the reason I managed to finish it (I am tired of 100 subplots and 200 characters in the same book). All of the plot twists felt earned, because looking back I can see where the author left those crumbs. I feel like the red herrings were a bit weak (except Ianthe at the end, which was a bit disappointing as the main villain so I was glad to see she was one), because I started to suspect Dulcinea right away (even though I never would have guessed why). Also, I was too focused on the characters to actually pay attention to the plot, so I didn’t guess much going forward, which made me feel pretty stupid, because some of that shit was very obvious. 

The characters: What I really loved was Gideon’s voice. The first few chapters were a bit flowery and there was a lot of purple prose to set the tone (which failed a bit, because I still imagined it more as a fantasy setting than a sci-fi one), but then it flawed perfectly. The jokes (narrated or spoke aloud) were great and it felt like they always fit. Sometimes the insults were a bit gratuitous but I like the trope of being infuriated with someone all of the time, you can’t help but think “oh fuck this bitch”. Also, the puns. Gideon, I love you. I would’ve liked them to be more mature (maybe 20 somethings), but it’s because I’m old and I want this type of narratives to have older MCs sometimes. 

Harrow really picked up in the second part of the book and I can’t wait to see how she’s changed in the second one. Loved Dulcinea from the start and I don’t care she was an evil god-like entity. She was a bit over the top in the battle (that thing about the arms and legs, why?!?), but I do love a dramatic bitch (I still lowkey like her & Gideon together). I was sorry for the Fourth & Fifth houses, but while I loved Magnus, I couldn’t stand the teenagers (but I did feel so, so sorry for Gideon). The Third house was obnoxious and I enjoyed Corona the most. I’m pretty sure Ianthe’s coming back, so we’ll see about that. Not gonna talk about the Eight - gave me WH 40K Inquisitor vibes, felt unneccessarily over the top. The Second was forgettable, I didn’t even understand the captain was a necromancer until she killed Teacher. And Sixth, oh, my darlings. If Camilla is dead I’m going to burn my kindle. Writing wise, concentrating on only one POV, kind of underdevelops secondary characters, so while Gideon’s voice was very strong, I feel like everyone else was a bit forgettable unless Gideon spent time on them. It was a book that could’ve easily been written in first person, if it didn’t have that ending. 

The relationship: I am going to be brief - I love rivalry that turns to love (any kind of love). So, I loved every single interaction between Harrow and Gideon (the pool scene broke me). Palamedes and Harrow had chemistry. I loved that Gideon just adopted everyone: I am your cavalier, now I am yours! Oh, screw it! I’m going to protect everyone! Gideon is such a himbo, even though she’s a shembo, but not a bimbo? I hated every single time the Third called their cavalier “Babs”. 

Things that were left open and Tamsyn better solve before the end of the series: “Gideon, you’re a ginger!” and basically everything fake!Dulcinea told Gideon about her past (”You don’t know what you are to me”). Also, why Gideon didn’t die when she was a child (and the obvious, where is she from?). Where are Corona and Camilla? What happened to Gideon’s body? And a few things I forgot about, because I wrote this “review” yesterday in my head and I didn’t write stuff down. 

Overall it was a very pleasant experience. And I may re-read it in the future to catch the foreshadowing and some hints. Now, onto Harrow the Ninth! Which is confusing? ‘Cause the Emperor called her Harrow the First?

Anyways. We love a tiny goth stirring shit with her “dead” girlfriend’s  two-hander. I am a bit scared, though, since what I really loved was Gideon’s narrating voice, but I’m guessing Harrow picked up some of her mannerism since she “ate” her? We’ll see. 

[recurring-polynya]

This is very random but I love the cast of random side characters that you made up (like Seike and Ohno) -- so much so that i am sometimes surprised when they dont actually appear in Bleach?? Anyway love that kind of consistency...would love to see it in my own writing someday skjfjsjsj

Ah, thank you so much! You are a great writer, and this is a very achievable goal!

Ha ha, believe it or not, Seike is actually canon?? I am pretty sure his name only appears in We Do (Knot) Always Love You, but I have always assumed it’s this guy:

Anyway, here are some tips for creating side characters! It’s way easier than you think!

I hate making up characters. I hate it. Much the way all great programmers are very lazy and therefore work to minimize the work they have to do over their entire lifetime, I work very hard to never have to make up anything about my characters.

Here’s a tip for names: I am not Japanese and coming up with Japanese names is hard for me and makes me nervous. If I am naming an important character, I will go to the trouble of giving them a meaningful name and working out the kanji, etc etc (by which I mean I go drop hours of my time into https://japanese-names.info/). If they are a side character, I will look up the Wikipedia article on “Japanese entomologists” or “Japanese Olympic figureskaters” and pick one surname and one given name that have the right “ring” to them. I will usually do a quick Google to make sure that name isn’t the name of an important character in some other anime/video game I wasn’t aware of. Bam. Done.

You can also cheat by naming everyone in Squad 6 Kuchiki, Ohno, or Gotou because they are all Byakuya’s relatives, or having there be six guys named Maki in Squad 11 (there are already semi-canonically 2). If you make a joke about it, everything thinks you’re a very funny person instead of just incredibly lazy.

I keep a spreadsheet. Every time I make up a detail about a character, I try to log it so I don’t have to look it up later. Here’s what the Squad 6 tab looks like:

Be minimalist. The less you make up, the less you have to remember later. Every time you bring in a character, say to yourself, what are they here for? You really don’t need to go much further than that. Ohno and Choei got introduced in one of my first fanfics, because a) I needed some exposition, and b) I wanted to show how Renji interacted with his squad. What I wanted to convey was that most of Squad 6 is lazy snobs who enjoy the benefits of nepotism and Renji’s presence is really cramping their deal: hence, Ohno. However, Renji is very likable, and I also wanted a contradicting voice that thought Renji was cool and fun and livened things up: hence Choei. I made them the 3rd and 4th seats because he would work with them a lot, and I would be able to reuse them. Ohno should be kinda important, so I made him the heir to the largest Kuchiki branch family, which explains why he’s snooty, but also always angling for Byakuya’s approval. Choei’s basic characteristic is his chill bro-ness and lack of ambition, so I made him an extraneous fifth son. He’s on the futsal team, because that gave him additional reason to like Renji. He’s openly gay because gay people are cool and I felt like it. That’s it. Two characters that I have gotten incredible mileage out of. Every story or so, I add another detail if it makes sense to. Ohno is, surprisingly, fond of dogs. Choei’s zanpakutou is a warhammer. Ohno’s dad is a huge bitch, which explains a lot about him without me having to explain anything.

My OC’s are primarily there for my protagonists to bounce off of! Like Plato’s shadows in the cave, they really, really, do not need to have a richer inner life than what our protags see of them.

One of my characterizations of Renji is that he’s very personable and knows everyone. When I’m doing his POVs, I name almost any character he comes across, and often include a fact about them. Conversely, when I’m writing Byakuya, who doesn’t notice people who are beneath him, I will frequently not use names, even on people whose names he should really know, like referring to Kira as “that dour fellow from 3.″ It’s also really interesting, particularly in the case of Squad 6, to examine the way Byakuya interacts with his underlings vs. the way Renji does.

One of the things having bit characters does is to make your world feel bigger. A related thing you can do is to casually namedrop places-- invent a name for the restaurant your characters like to go to, or refer to different parts of your setting like you are describing them to someone who lives there (”up near the art musuem” or “that noodle place north of the Eleventh”). When I write about the Seireitei, I am always thinking about my Local Large City, and how I would describe where things are.

Reuse bit-part canon characters interchangeably with your own! This works very well in confusing your audience as to who you made up and who is canon! As I mentioned, Seike is actually canon, although we don’t know much about him. Ichigo’s lesser-known classmates, like Ryo and Michiru are similar. I tend to think of characters in tiers: in my stories, the protagonists are Renji, Rukia, and to a slightly lesser degree, Byakuya, so that’s my A-tier. The B-tier are the other Bleach characters they interact with the most-- Izuru, Momo, Shuuhei, Ikkaku, Yumichika, Hitsugaya, Ukitake, etc. The C-tier are characters that are of lesser importance in the canon story, but I like them, or they are relevant to the story, so I use them, like Hanataro, Akon, Rikichi, Kiyone and Sentaro, etc. There are also the characters that are important canonically, but just aren’t as important to my stories-- Soi Fon, Kyouraku, etc. Then, there’s the D-tier, which should contain both throwaway canon characters, like, Seike, and your made up cast. If you can keep them at the same level, you’re doing the right thing! If you use any character enough, they can move up a tier! There’s also an E-tier for characters that are just a name and some minor details. It’s good and okay to have these, too! You can think about this in terms of tags, as well: your primary audience is clicking on your story for your A-tier characters, and many people may be clicking on it because they are thirsty for content of your B-tier characters, so try to scale their roles according. You’re trying to make the C-tier characters happen, and your audience is just gonna have to deal with it, so it’s your job to convince people that they are Good, Actually. D-characters are there for flavoring, and I guess if you can make people like them, that says something about you (me, I guess?) as a writer.

When I wrote Between Tides, I cut my protagonists off from their main cast so I *had* to introduce some OCs at the B/C-tier and I hated it and rolled around on the floor wailing about it for 3 months. I have gotten so many compliments on Rukia’s intense, overbearing boss, Sunadori, and Renji’s no-nonsense cooking mentor/witch friend, Mrs. Kuwashima. I have no explanation, except maybe all the anguishing did something. I think I invented them more by feel than anything else-- Sunadori’s role was to get Rukia used to the idea of being a vice-captain, and Mrs. Kuwashima’s role was to let Renji be someone’s soft son for a bit. This is more important than any particular bit of backstory. Mrs. Kuwashima didn’t even have much of a backstory, now that I think about it, and the only reason Sunadori had one is because it tied into the plot.

Also, I am a dialogue-ist, and I let my characters establish themselves through their own voices, rather than trying to enforce personalities from above.

Ha ha, I think that’s long enough. Thank you for this opportunity to bloviate about my own writing. The upshot is, worldbuilding is not just magic systems and fantasy governments, it’s also deciding that the lady who goalkeeps the Squad 6 futsal team is also Byakuya’s cousin who once pushed him in the mud as a child.

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Review and Digression: The Black Magician Trilogy and Fantasy in General

by Dan H

Friday, 04 January 2008Dan remains unnecessarily complicated~

I don't read a lot these days. I'm lazy and easily distracted. When I do read, I tend to read fantasy. Growing up on Narnia, D&D, Warhammer and Terry Pratchett left me with the kind of mind which adapts to fictional worlds far more easily than real ones. Unfortunately despite having an abiding infatuation with the Fantasy genre, I don't actually ... well ... like it very much. Leaving aside the fact that a lot of it just isn't very good (a criticism which could be levelled at any genre, including literary fiction) it tends to be overlong, rambling, and full of annoying details about the history of imaginary places. George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series, for example, began amazingly, creating a rich and detailed world with a complex multiple-viewpoint narrative, creating a real sense of the unfolding of history, and I loved the early books with a passion. The later books, however, got horribly bogged down in history and worldbuilding and the annoying obsession with detailing every last second of events in the Seven Kingdoms as it unfolded. Similarly while I loved The Hobbit, I could never get past the first book of The Lord of the Rings because of all the goddamned scenery. And the least said about Harry Potter the better. 

I picked up Trudi Canavan's The Magician's Guild out of a smug sense of irony. The blurb on the back, which describes a none-too-original situation with a Magician's Guild who march through a city protected by a shield of pure magic driving out vagrants, only to find that a plucky young slum girl can penetrate their defences by means of her hitherto unknown magical power, left me with the impression that the book would be at best amusingly awful, but worth picking up on buy-one-get-one-free.

I started reading the book with the same patronising self-assurance, quietly laughing at the rather generic fantasy names and the peculiar made-up wildlife. About three chapters in, however, something happened. I realised that I was actually really enjoying reading the book. I wasn't storing up scathing comments to put on the internet at a later date, or constructing detailed point-by-point analysis of why the series was subtly advocating neo-Marxist doctrines through the medium of a story about wizards. I was actually enjoying it. Taking a moment to think about it, I realised that the source of my enjoyment was something I had seldom seen before in a fantasy novel: the plot was actually progressing. Every chapter, something happened which built on the things that happened in the previous chapter, and set up the things that were going to happen in the next chapter. It introduced conflicts and then resolved them, usually in the space of less than two hundred pages. Not only that but, wonder of wonders, once something had been resolved, it stayed resolved. There were no "protagonist gets captured, protagonist escapes, protagonist gets captured again, protagonist escapes again" sequences. Not a page in the book is wasted on irrelevant descriptions or pointless sidequests.

On her website (which I will say more about later) Trudi Canavan describes herself as having a short attention span, if she is bored writing something - says Trudi - then she assumes people will get bored reading it. Perhaps the reason I loved these books so much is that Trudi's attention span seems to match my own almost exactly. Every time I found myself thinking "okay, I've had enough of this plotline now," the plot would be resolved within two pages and taken in a completely new direction. Each book in the Black Magician Trilogy is in two parts, and in between parts one and two, the book changes gear completely. In The Magician's Guild, for example, the first half of the book focuses on Sonea (the protagonist) trying to avoid being taken in by the magician's guild, while the second half focuses on her trying to avoid being thrown out again, and the transition comes at exactly the point where you start thinking "okay, I've had enough of this girl running away from people now". This pattern repeats in books two and three, with the change of pace at the half-way point being both refreshing and genuinely surprising.

Canavan's mastery of pacing extends to the overarching plot of the trilogy as well as to the individual books. A common problem in Fantasy series is for it to be obvious from chapter one of book one how the series is going to end, which makes the rest of the series into so much pointless preamble. I know I promised I wouldn't bring up Harry Potter, but the last three HP books are an excellent example of this problem. Once Voldemort comes back, it's obvious that we're just waiting for Harry to hit eighteen so he can confront the bugger, and books five, six, and seven are just 1500 pages of buildup. Canavan, on the other hand, very carefully reveals her plot elements only at the point at which they become relevant. The plot of book two is set up in the last chapters of book one, the plot of book three is set up in the last chapters of book two. At no point do we have to ask ourselves why we care about subplot X when main issue Y is clearly more important.

To put it another way. Trudi Canavan is blessedly aware that she is writing a novel, a work of fiction intended to entertain a reader. There is a popular adage that a fantasy novel is like a window into another world, and too many fantasy writers take this literally, seeming to view their books as something which you look through in order to see whatever happens to be going on in their secondary creation at a given time. Canavan never loses sight of the fact that she is writing fiction, telling a story, trying to entertain people.

This becomes ever more apparent if you look at her excellent

personal website

, which is full of beautifully down-to-earth bits of information and opinion. A rather nice section on her weblog explains the sorts of fanmail questions she won't be answering, one of which is "Pedantic Irrelevant Detail Questions". In particular she points out that "You know, if I didn't mention it, it was probably not relevant". As our esteemed editor has already pointed out

elsewhere on Ferretbrain

there is a nasty tendency for modern writers (particularly fantasy writers) and modern readers (particularly fantasy readers) to view works of fiction as having some kind of set, external reality, and to view questions like "is Dumbledore gay" or "how do you explain the discrepancies between the Star Wars prequels and the implied backstory of the original trilogy" as having a definitive, relevant answer. Throughout her website, Trudi espouses a beautifully sensible view of her work. She views writing as a craft you get better at by practising, and her books as works of fiction she created to entertain an audience. She also comes across as charmingly geeky (check out her pinboards full of notes and hand-drawn maps).

Looking back at the above 1200 words, I seem to have been rather embarrassingly gushy. I'd love to redeem myself with some sarcastic barbs about style or characterisation, but I genuinely don't have any. I could make some kind of joke about the made-up animals (all of the animals in Canavan's worlds are fictional, with the peculiar exception of horses) but it seems frankly churlish to do so (particularly given the fact that she has explained and defended her decision to pack her world with invented rodents on several occasions). The Black Magician Trilogy is by no means great literature (which is good, because great literature bores my tits off), but it is well written, engaging fantasy. It's tightly plotted, masterfully paced, the protagonists are all interesting and likeable.

I still wish she'd call a cow a cow though.Themes:

Books

,

Trudi Canavan

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

~

bookmark this with - facebook - delicious - digg - stumbleupon - reddit

~Comments (

go to latest

)

Wardog

at 16:31 on 2008-01-04Also she's hotter than Scott Lynch...

permalink

-

go to top

Rami

at 18:26 on 2008-01-04Yay! I liked the Black Magician trilogy too -- although I thought bits of it did seem just a tad contrived -- and I'm glad it's not been ripped to shreds :-)

permalink

-

go to top

http://davidlynch.org/

at 08:03 on 2009-11-25This is an excessively late comment.

I, too, really enjoyed the Black Magician trilogy, but there were two things in the final book which annoyed me enough that I'm unlikely to ever go back and reread it.

(Spoilers ahoy, gentle reader.)

First: Akkarin's death felt pointless, and seemed to mainly happen so that the trilogy could end on an "awesomely tragic" note. It sat poorly with the tone of the rest of the series, and broke my immersion in the world. Actually, the death itself I'm okay with... it was Sonea finding out she was pregnant that really got to me.

Second: The only character in the series who's sympathetic to gay people turns out to be gay... it's just he could never admit it to himself until now! This just bugged me. All it would have taken is for him to not be the only tolerant person, and I'd have been fine with it.

permalink

-

go to top

Dan H

at 11:22 on 2009-11-25I'm okay with Akkarin dying - I kinda felt it was heading that way. I mean once you've got life-energy transfer magic it's pretty much mandatory for somebody to sacrifice themselves with it.

The "and then she turns out to be pregnant" thing was a little bit irksome. If only because I'm beginning to get sick of the fact that people in fantasy settings only *ever* seem to get pregnant after their partners die (and then *always* do). It's like some kind of extremely severe population control policy in Fantasyland.

permalink

-

go to top

Wardog

at 13:27 on 2009-11-25This is completely off-topic but zomg, you write WoW add-ons! That is way cooler than being a director.

permalink

-

go to top

Rami

at 17:12 on 2009-11-25

zomg, you write WoW add-ons! That is way cooler than being a director.

I almost agree. I mostly think

lj.py

is much more amusing than Mulholland Drive;-).

permalink

-

go to top

[navigatorkyle]

The Art of War

The hobby of tabletop wargames is competitive by nature, and fueled by the ruthless cunning and ever-sharpening strategy of the astute tactical minds who play the games. However, there is an opposite side of the competitive coin. For every diehard strategic commander with a thirst for victory on the battlefield, there is an artist who simply can't resist the allure of the massive canvas Warhammer 40k provides. One such artist is Andre Schneider, an active member of Marblehead's local play group, frequent patron of Saugus' friendly local games store, and incorrigible space pirate scum.

Schneider's chosen niche in the world of tabletop wargaming is aesthetics over competition. Armed with hobby saws, files, knives, drills, and other fine tools, Schneider brings together pieces from myriad different plastic kits, discarding assembly instruction manuals whenever possible to give his armada of bloodthirsty raiders the most obvious personality and flair- to make them wholly unique. Likewise when the time comes to paint his army for use on the tabletop, he stains his hard work in shades of deep red, bone-white, and pitted silver.

I sat down with the man to discuss his craft, and to look for where that boundless inspiration and imagination comes from.

  Kyle Kreisher: So. Where would you- what would you say your sort of hobbying origin story is?

  Andre Schneider: My hobbying origin story... Well, to be completely honest, it started with you, I think. Sort of transitioning from the occasional video games to Warhammer- and you showing me kind of the ins and outs of the game. And I think that that really started my hobby journey is what it would be, obviously.

  Kyle Kreisher: Yeah.

  Andre Schneider: And I just got super into the story and into the lore of Warhammer and the backstory and the characters, all that stuff. And I think that's how it started.

  Kyle Kreisher: Yeah, I can't remember if we did Dungeons and Dragons or Warhammer first.

  Andre Schneider: I think it was Warhammer first, but not by much. Although I do remember I got into Warhammer slower than I did into D&D because you got me into that and I jumped into it quite quickly because I love how organic it was and how easy it was to world-build and to create amazing stories and character arcs and to just experience that was really cool. And I think it took me a little bit longer to get into Warhammer because there was a bit more of a learning curve when it came to the actual mechanics of the game. But once I got a hold of that, that was- yeah, that was kind of it. It was really fun. [chuckling].

  Kyle Kreisher: Yeah, yeah- so my understanding is like even now, you still- you kind of lean more heavily towards like the hobbying side of things rather than just playing a game.

  Andre Schneider: Yeah, I'd say so. I'd say so.

  Kyle Kreisher: Like you're all about the painting and modeling.

  Andre Schneider: Yeah, definitely. And I can definitely see the appeal for those who are very competitive and whose love really getting into the nitty gritty of the mechanics of the game. I can definitely see how that would appeal to those people. And I think I'm starting to get into that too, like figuring out how to optimize strategies and points and all that stuff. But I think naturally I'm more inclined to the painting, the building, especially building custom models and things like that. It is very, very fun. It's just like better Legos, you know? That's basically what it is.

  [Both laughing]

  Kyle Kreisher: Yeah, I totally hear you. So what would you say- Are your big creative inspirations like music, artwork?

  Andre Schneider: Oh? Wow. Well, I think it comes from a myriad of places. I think one- reading for sure. You know, I've got a couple favorite authors that write fantastic science fiction like Brandon Sanderson, obviously. So I think a lot of my, I guess, spark of imagination is stoked by those books, but also to be completely honest. Spending time with you guys, like spend time with you and Ian especially and just sort of that social environment in which we're just constantly bouncing ideas off of each other for stuff and that- that really elevates the creative process for me.

  Kyle Kreisher: Huh.

  Andre Schneider: Yes.

  Kyle Kreisher: Good answer.

  Andre Schneider: It's true for sure.

  Kyle Kreisher: So on that note, can you take me through what your average like painting or assembling session looks like? What do you set up so that you can just sort of sit down and vibe for, you know, however long?

  Andre Schneider: Yeah, yeah. Well, usually before I even set up, it starts to usually some kind of idea, you know, or golden nugget of an idea that pops up usually from from talking to you or Ian about custom models or about story for a character or a paint scheme or something like that. And I think, oh yeah, that'd be awesome, you know? And so then I usually grab whatever pieces I need to assemble some of the models. So pieces, some super glue. I usually put down- you know, those white poster boards?

  Kyle Kreisher: Yeah.

  Andre Schneider: Like a flat white poster boards. Yes. I usually put one of those down because that helps with seeing the colors properly. If you have if you're painting a model over a dark surface, it gets pretty hard to see contrasting colors and things like that for me. So I usually like to put something white down in that I don't really care about getting paint on. Get some good light. You know, like a desk light is obviously nice and usually just some music, man. You know, I usually put on- but then again, like that, music varies from either, you know, like Pantera and rock and metal to, you know, like Chillwave stuff. [laughs]

  Kyle Kreisher: Yeah.

  Andre Schneider: It kind of depends what I'm feeling. I think it also depends on what I'm actually doing. If I'm making a custom model that I'm very excited to build, I'll usually be listening to more exciting music and rock and things like that, that'll kind of get you just stoked. But I'm just kind of painting grunt models or something or just kind of hanging out. Then it's more more the chill vibes.

  Kyle Kreisher: Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

  Andre Schneider: Yeah, you do!

  [Both laughing].

  Andre Schneider: Well because sometimes we're painting together, so- we have a very similar state of mind when it comes to that, I feel like.

  Kyle Kreisher: Do you write fiction on the side? Like you mentioned lore a bunch.

  Andre Schneider: Yeah. I actually I definitely get into very much a rabbit hole in that regard. I remember thinking up some initial backstory for the army that I created and ended up writing like 15 pages worth of stuff. Just 'cause.

  Kyle Kreisher: Just kind of like vomiting it all onto a page?

  Andre Schneider: Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much just because I just love the creative act of worldbuilding. And of story building. And I can easily get carried away with that stuff. You know, I think of I think of, you know, where this army comes from and what their motivations are and where and what why that's happened. And I think, oh, and they've taken refuge on this hostile world that's like this! And then I think of this new term and I'm like, oh, well, this actually references this. And blah blah blah, And then it just goes, you know?

  Kyle Kreisher: Yeah.

  Andre Schneider: Yeah.

  Kyle Kreisher: How different do you think the game would be without that sort of- the sort of extra steps like extra little nooks to the hobby?

  Andre Schneider: I think it I think it definitely wouldn't be as popular. I think there'd be less people doing it because like I remember saying, you know, that that Warhammer has a little something for everyone in the sense that if you're really into the strategy side of it and optimizing, you know, army compositions and things like that and plays and all that stuff, there is a real area for you to do that. But if you're more about the creative side and assembling custom models and painting and making up story, then there's also a side for that. Because also just the Warhammer universe has thousands of pages of lore already written and the community sort of can just sort of insert their own ideas into it. And that's- that's really cool. That's a very sort of organic hobby, I think, in that sense. So if that didn't exist. I think a lot less people would be playing it.

  Kyle Kreisher: Yeah, I agree. Are you- do you have any projects sort of hanging out in the background currently?

  Andre Schneider: Well, kind of. I'm sort of dipping my toes into a second army, but I'm telling myself to finish the first before I go on to the second. And in terms of my first army, I still have some ideas floating around in terms of extra detachments to add like different sort of custom squadrons that fit into the story that I created for it. And I think also, yeah, I've got a few ideas for custom models and conversions, but I don't really have anything that I'm actively assembling.  

  Kyle Kreisher: All right.

  Andre Schneider: I've always got ideas. I mean, like, you know, you've always got ideas for more stuff like, you know, midway through, finally assembling the thing you've been thinking about for months, like you're like, I should do this next.

  Kyle Kreisher: You're so right! My poor wallet. So what other avenues of my creative output are similar to this that people who are interested could also look into it? Do you have any ideas?

  Andre Schneider: Hmm. Dungeons and Dragons. One hundred percent.

  Kyle Kreisher: That's the big one, isn't it?

  Andre Schneider: Yeah, it is the big one. And I think a lot of people sort of judge it before they actually know what it is. You know, let people who Dungeons and Dragons and think oh, it's like the nerd basement thing. But what it literally is, it's a mechanism in which you can realize your imagination. And I think that's super cool. And so that's sort of the purest form of this creative process that takes place in Warhammer. And also, at least for me, another one of my hobbies that I really enjoy is Magic. Magic: the Gathering. And for me, It's not so much the lore side of it. It's more of the process of creating decks and, you know, synergizing mechanics and things like that. And that's that's quite fun for me as well. So I think somebody who's into Warhammer might like that aspect of Magic as well.

  Kyle Kreisher: All right. Well, thanks so much for your input.

  Andre Schneider: Dude, no worries, man. Thanks for allowing me to do your interview, that was super fun!

  Kyle Kreisher: Absolutely. Thanks so much.

  Andre Schneider: Yeah, don't worry bro.