the egg hunt is rigged. poor jas doesn’t stand a chance when abigail is hustling down town square. all for some damn colored eggs.
well… it looks like she lost against the farmer again. i wasn’t praying on her downfall or anything, but i have to admit it’s a little funny watching her get humbled.
Ah, Benchmade. The reason why balisongs are called buttefly knives by the general public, and an absolute juggernaut in the larger knife community. There's a reason people swear by Benchmade and their other stuff, but more specifically, I want to talk about the new balisong they've supposedly been cooking up that is insanely worrying at best and a slap in the face to the community at worst.
Before we get into the knife in question, let's take a trip down memory lane with Benchmade's past balisongs. First up, we have the Model 42 and its siblings:
MSRP of around $200 USD, washers only, and you had a choice of either steel or titanium handles, but back then it was all that you could get your hands on that wouldn't fall apart in a matter of weeks. They're what some of the first flippers ever had their hands on, up until its discontinuation, and I stand to say that it is the most iconic balisong of all time. It's in all the movies, it's one of the first knives that pop up when you search balisongs on Google—hell, some people now are asserting that its flipping still stacks up to what's on the market today. But it and its siblings did not last forever, and it was discontinued in the early 2010s, replaced by the Model 51:
~$280 USD MSRP, and still only on washers, but this time it was on titanium liners and G10 scales. People didn't like the 51 as much as the 42, but again, options were very limited (your only other real choice was a Bradley Kimura), and with the handles not being one solid piece of material, it soon became a bit of a modding platform alongside the BRS Replicant when that came along. But yet again, things don't last forever, and the 51 saw its discontinuation a few years back.
Benchmade was always a company that didn't seem to care much for the flipping community, considering the last balisongs they used to offer, the 8x series, are 5.5 oz bearing knives that retailed for $500+ USD. But around 4 months ago, a page from their 2024 catalogue got leaked to the balisong subreddit about a new balisong they're trying to cook up, which is the subject of today's rant:
Meet the Necron, a liners + G10 knife with an adjustable balance, options for handle extensions, and a weight that wasn't totally unbearable. While some people didn't like its resemblance to the Replicant, it seemed like Benchmade was finally paying attention to the flipping community with the fact that they geared the knife towards flipping. Even if the base live blade was marked at $450 USD, it was about par for the course considering Benchmade's prices on all of their current products.
Then Blade HQ released a video about Benchmade's 2024 catalogue along with preorder listings. Included was the Necron, and when the knife's full specs were revealed, I witnessed an entire community go "what the fuck" in real time.
Before I reveal the Necron's full specs, there's something I want you to understand. The community's bar for Benchmade has been six feet underground ever since the release of the 8x series with how overpriced it was. Considering their importance in the early days of the hobby, a good chunk of older flippers I've talked to would be perfectly content with a rerelease of the 4x series or even the 51—Cold Steel is doing this with an aluminum version of the Arc Angel, and some people are at least mildly interested in it. But Benchmade seems to be allergic to that, and in recent years with them jacking up prices all across the board, opinions surrounding them have soured.
Anyway, here are the Necron's full specs:
Did you notice that the liners are steel? Did you notice that it's only on washers?
In its price bracket alone, you have things like the SlifT and Serif-P from Machinewise, the Tsunami Trainer from Squid Industries, the Cygnus from LDY, the Specter, Chimera, and Basilisk-R from Jerry Hom—all of these knives are just one step below the absolute best of the best of production balisongs, and all of these have bushings, at least use titanium in the handles, and are built with the utmost care an an attention to detail (except for maybe the Tsunami, but that's a rant for another time).
The Necron is none of those. Instead, it is a knife that would have been outdated 5 years ago, lacks features that 85 dollar knives have, and is only going to be bought by braindead shills who care about the brand of the knife and nothing else. The Replicant outclasses it in every way, and for the price of the Necron you could build a custom one entierly from aftermarket parts. Even within Benchmade's past knives, both the 42 and the 51 used titanium in some capacity, and both of those knives were considerably cheaper than what the Necron is gonna retail for. At least Ben Parli's gonna get some more customers...
In the Blade HQ video I mentioned earlier, the Benchmade representative touted on about how they're tracing back to their roots with what they call a "modern knife" that'll be good for flipping. But with the sheer cognitive dissonance between what they say about it and what's what the truth of it is, the community at large can't help but feel that they're completely out of touch and only want to line their pockets with more money. If this is the way Behcnmade goes out making balisongs, then so be it. It's not like Benchmade cares anymore anyway.
Trans Girls be like “ooou I’m sorry I still have my penis but I’m on hrt and I can’t get hard no matter how long we grind against each other and make out and I’m so soft and my hair is so shiny and smells like your shampoo and I cum different now my dick is so wet and your pussy is so wet now too and we’re still making out nasty are you mad at me” and also they look like angels and have lovely voices I’m gay help
I have to tell so many adults that I don't have any magical powers, I just haven't stopped drawing since early childhood and they did.
And it's fine. They stopped drawing because they didn't enjoy it enough to learn and develop this skill. Or, sadly, something took the joy of it for them, in that case I'm sorry.
But they could always try to start now! They are very surprised when I tell them drawing is in a big part observation and understanding how things work!
It only becomes toxic when someone who doesn't enjoy any artistic technique demands to create art because they want the praise of an artist. Shame on the prompters.
Children say it too. Earlier and earlier. There are a million reasons why they believe they can't draw at the age of frickin' 6 and all of them are the fault of adults, whether those directly in their life or, more likely, those who run the commercial world by shaming us into consumption.
I've finally taken to starting my art classes with " I know some of you will want to say you can't draw or don't draw well enough, but trust me, that isn't true here. Even if you draw the ugliest blob ever, it's good enough. If you hate it, tell me what you hate about it and we will see if you can improve it."
You gotta give people explicit permission to draw, and it sucks, but you gotta whenever you can. And you gotta remind them that paper can be cut up and pasted and it is okay to draw the head again and glue it onto the body that you didn't mess up! And... sorry I'm rambling but my point was that I hate how often I hear children say they can't draw.
Special eff you to the mum who interrupted me as I was explaining the exercise to her small child by shouting "oh no he can't draw that yet! he's too young!"
Ma'am, shut the fuck up, you just did so much damage it might last years.
people are so weird about self insert ocs actually. like why wouldn't you want a made up little guy who's like you except cooler and they get to live all your fantasies? what are you afraid of? having fun? free yourself
kaledo-art
janainaart
snowghoul
germansingergirl
jbbartram-illu
