Rest in peace, John Blanche. You had a truly monolithic, formative impact on both Warhammer as an IP, and the lives of countless fans and artists around the world.
Today in dumb rabbit holes: astartes and primarchs vs facial hair. It's obvious they can grow it (Leman Russ and I'm SO disappointed that reddit never looked up the etymology of Leman because his name literally translates to 'loverboy Russ') and the Khan, and Dorn so it's POSSIBLE but is it? Are some of them incapable of growing facial hair? Was Angron stuck forever in that awkward teenage 'an attempt was made' and that's why he's so angry? Do they need to shave? Do they shave...everything? I mean, body hair under a bodyglove has to get pretty rank. Are Blood Angels sporting Brazilian waxes? Do ultramarines remove facial hair with pumice stone (as was the custom in ancient rome)?
The beard thing weirds me out esp bc we know some astartes have them (Librarian Zoth, for example and like every Space Wolf ever) but after a while, as we all know from covid, too much facial hair and your mask won't seal (I am referring to the NiOSH 100s we wore on duty and men were required to be absolutely cleanshaven)
I know the answer to the latter is 'male authors love beards and hate practicality so if the character has Lemmy mustachios or a full ZZ Top beard it's totes ok because rule of cool' but my brain just...can't let it go
Also I know (having spent my formative years attached to an infantry unit) young men go through an experimental phase where they try out weird shit with their facial hair. So now I kind of wonder if Astartes do the same thing. If Dante ever had the 'how WOULD I look with a handlebar mustache' or if Thiel ever tried rocking a soul patch.
C-could you imagine Dante revisiting that now in canon, just showing up with a goatee or something and everyone else trying really hard not to react. Mephiston *looking worried*: it is time for an intervention
When I was in the Army I had waist length hair and I can tell you that I had to have a helmet sized up quite a bit to accommodate the braided crown because we had to be ready at any time to helmet up, so if you have this sort of long flowing beard (OR HAIR, MEPHISTON) like...what's the process? No twisting your hair up in a halfassed french twist? Do you tuck your beard over your ears? I NEED THE PROCESS. Because in my brain I'm seeing a helmeted astartes with beard just...hanging out under the muzzle. Ewww.
My birthday is next week and I'm in my pre-birthday failhole where I just don't want to do anything. Like...breathing.
I've never had a birthday party. I was the second child and my parents never wanted kids at all so birthday parties weren't a thing. I once asked for one and got told, very seriously, that no one liked me and no one would come even if I had one, and so they were 'protecting' me from that rejection by not having a party for me at all.
Last year for my birthday my sister gave me.... a calendar. Which technically wasn't HALF used by the end of May, but close. (I should mention my sister is a doctor (the golden child) and she has money. Not that I want a huge expensive thing, but really, a calendar that she snatched from some clearance rack--if it's the thought that counts...that's that). That's how little my own family cares about me.
When I got out of the Army, I had a little ritual, every year where I'd debate if I actually wanted to sign on for another year of this shit, or...you know, do the other thing.
I don't do that anymore because probably I'm a coward, and definitely as an EMT I've been to enough suicide calls to not want to traumatize some poor young dumb EMT with that shit.
But still, birthdays are hard for me. Because it's another trip around the sun and I have to sit and figure out the places I made it a spiral and the places I've just been spinning my wheels.
I remember last year I asked people to give me writing prompts so I could attenuate the grimness of the whole birthday season by being creative and maybe doing nice for someone and I remember how...no one hit me up. HAHAHAH the worst feeling in the world is reaching out for help and your hand is there, trembling, waiting for anything, until your muscles fatigue and shame takes you down. Instead of being something positive, it flung me further into the fail hole.
I will not be making that mistake against. Public humiliation once is bad enough. I can learn! I just wish the universe would give me the chance just once to learn from success instead of yet more failure.
I have plans for my birthday this year: I'm going to my favorite ramen shop and then to a silent book club in this groovy new place. But man, these days leading up to it are getting really hard.
You learn a lot about who your friends are when you watch what happens when you share some good news.
So, I got a li'l story published in Cold Open and when I got the acceptance, I squee'd about it in my RP discord group, where I play with a cast. Two people (not in my cast) congratulated me.
No one asked about the story, or asked for a link.
My castmates? Dead silence. Could not even be bothered to hit a 'react'. Not even the least effort of performative pretending to be happy or excited for me.
In yoga we have this term called 'mudita'--happiness over someone else's happiness. It's, rightfully, considered rare.
When you don't even acknowledge someone sharing something good that happened for them, you are kind of killing the buzz. Do I wish I never mentioned it to them?
Not really. They killed any excitement I had about sharing my story with anyone, but it was worth it to find out they weren't actual friends. And I know not to share any more good news with them. That's good information to know.
And I know they're not my friends. It's absurd to expect that just because you have two things in common, you're friends. But I wish they'd stop insisting they were. It's so awkward, because, ya know, now I've got confirmation. It's okay to not be friends with someone. Just stop lying about it.
And if you see someone sharing good news, for fuck's sake, you don't have to be bestest friends with them to be a decent human being. There's little enough joy in the garbage fire world right now that it literally is an act of political resistance at this point to promote and uplift any joy or good news. Click a heart emoji. Type 'congrats!' It's not that hard to do, I promise you.
The tag set for the Summer Fest Exchange is now open for nominations!
Nominations close on May 31 at 3:59pm GMT | 5:59pm CEST | 11:59am EDT | 8:59am PDT (countdown).
If you are new to gift exchanges on AO3, here is a guide on how to submit character/relationship nominations to the WH40K Summer Fest Exchange tag set. 👇
What is the tag set for?
Put shortly, the tag set is our shared wishlist for characters and relationships we'd like to include in this exchange.
Like most exchanges on AO3, the WH40K Summer Fest begins with a two-step setup period:
During the nomination period (May 15–May 31), anyone can submit characters and relationships to the tag set created for the exchange.
During the sign-up period (June 1–June 14), participants submit requests and offers for characters/relationships from the tag set they would like to create or receive fanfic/fanart for. At the end of the sign-up period, the exchange mods will match participants based on their requests and offers.
You can only sign up to request or offer the characters and relationships contained in the tag set, so make sure to submit your nominations before Sunday May 31, 3:59pm GMT | 5:59pm CEST | 11:59am EDT | 8:59am PDT (countdown). After this time, the tag set will close and additional nominations cannot be added.
How to nominate
You'll need an AO3 account to participate in this exchange. If you do not have an account, you can request an invitation to join the Archive here – the wait time is currently around 8 days.
Find the link to the tag set in the info box at the top of the exchange's profile page (or click here).
On the tag set page, click 'nominate' in the top right corner.
Choose 'Warhammer 40.000' for the fandom.
All nominations go in the 'Warhammer 40.000' fandom category, even if they belong to other media, e.g., the Horus Heresy series, the Rogue Trader computer game, etc. Nominations are only used for matching participants; when you upload your gift to AO3, you can use the fandom tag(s) of your choice.
Both characters and relationships go in the 'relationship' box for matching purposes.
Add characters to the tagset by writing: Character: Name and finishing with a comma.
Add pairings by writing Name/Name (for romantic or sexual pairings) or Name & Name (for platonic pairings/friendships/enemyships – any specific characters you want interacting in a non-romantic/non-sexual way). If the tag has been used on AO3 before, you can choose it from the dropdown menu, otherwise finish with a comma.
You can nominate Original Characters as characters or in relationships. HOWEVER, note that it will be the creator's choice which OC to use; e.g., if you request "Saint Celestine/Original Female Character," the creator can use an OC you suggest in your sign-up but can also use their own idea. You may nominate original characters that specify an OC's faction ("Original Ultramarine & Original Tau Fire Warrior") and/or gender ("Original Transfem Sister of Battle/Original Nonbinary Imperial Guard").
You can also nominate 'Any' characters, e.g., "Sanguinius & Any Blood Angel(s)", "Ciaphas Cain/Any Canon Female Character", to give the creator freedom to choose which character(s) to include.
You can nominate up to 20 characters or pairings.
Once you are done, click 'submit' at the bottom of the page.
You can add more characters and pairings, up to 20, by clicking 'My nominations' on the tag set page, but once your nominations have been approved by the mods they can't be deleted.
If you nominate something that has already been nominated by someone else, or if the mods change the wording/order of names to match archive conventions (e.g., "Ulfar of the Space Wolves" ➡ "Ulfar Redmane"), it may continue to appear on your 'My nominations' page as unapproved. Click 'Expand All' on the tag set page to see a full list of all nominated characters/relationships and check if your nominations are included, possibly under a slightly different name.
It may take up to 24+ hours for nominations to be approved, so please don't delete your unapproved nominations.
If you have any questions about your nominations, contact the mods at [email protected] or here on tumblr.
Remember to follow this page for updates on nomination clarifications and more.
Ignore the slightly out of focus pic, and my dumb station binkie. The book is Blood of Iax, about Ultramarines.
The highlighted part sent me down a rabbithole, because it's canon in the Carcharodon Astra books that it's a flaw of their chimeric geneseed that they have significant memories of their lives prior to becoming Astartes. It's presented as unusual and....not great (Kordi, especially).
And here we have Ultramarines and somehow the Primaris procedure, we are to believe, also allows this to sometimes happen with them? Kastor, his brother, has significantly more memories than Polixis here (they are biological brothers, I mean). And Polixis, an Apothecary, we can presume Knows Stuff so this is presented as a known thing.
And then we have Gadriel in Space Marine 2, who clearly has memories of his family--maybe not perfectly, but enough to know that he kinda hates his family and finds shame in them.
I mean it's one interesting thing that the same author (Robbie MacNiven) is just...fixated with this idea of Astartes remembering life before and what it means, but also, it's just interesting that it's presented as a new and kind of upsetting, thing here (though less so in "A Brother's Confession", where it's still seen as weird, but Polixis has a kind of envy that his brother remembers so much more).
Anyway, I just wanted to yap about this topic and maybe someone else finds it interesting. My discord group is fucking EXHAUSTED of me bringing lore bits like magpie junk and so at least here I can babble into the void.
There’s a certain folkloric idea that if you die at sea, your soul is sort of. Inextricably stuck in the sea. Because your body is irretrievable, your soul is also irretrievable, down out of the reach of the gods who look at the surface of the world. In Norse mythology, they say that the souls of sailors who died at sea are caught in the sea-goddess Rán’s net and dragged into her domain, a distinct and separate afterlife alongside Hel and Valhalla. Davy Jones Locker. The funayūrei. A lot of cultures agree that once sea has a hold on you, even when your body has rotted and dwindled and been made food for crabs, it still won’t let you go.
Do you think we’re going to wind up saying the same thing about astronauts.
"Most times you want to get the ones in LEO. They can still see their home, and want to go back. If you're lucky, you can tell them you'll find them on your way down and they'll let you go. The most fortunate find the dog. A friendly little guy who's just solid enough to feel your hands petting him. None of the others mess with the dog.
"Those around the Moon, or Mars? They're a bit nastier. Lonely, I think. Some just want to talk, messing up the instruments in the hopes you hear them. Others mess your instruments so you'll join them out there. A new face in their lonely voyages.
"But it's the ones in deep space you have to worry about. Lot of those don't even remember they were human. Just an incorporeal mass of want. What do they want? They don't remember anymore. You can always tell if you caught one of those by the screaming, the way they smash you against the walls like they forgot what a door is. But they're not the worst."
"They're not the worst? Then what is?"
"The kind left trailing in the comets. Nobody knows what those are. The crawling liver, the webbed lungs, the sensation of seeing while blind and shouting desperately with your shoulder blades, 'I'm here, come back, don't leave me'. Never follow a comet."
I love these posts. And hypothetical space folklore/mythology in general.
These posts reminded me of several other things, included below.
To begin with: Some of this counts as "star lore," a real thing!
Wikipedia:
Star lore or starlore is the creating and cherishing of mythical stories about the stars and star patterns (constellations and asterisms); that is, folklore based upon the stars and star patterns. Using the stars to explain religious doctrines or actual events in history is also defined as star lore. Star lore has a very long history; it has been practiced by nearly every culture recorded in history, dating as far back as 5,500 years ago. It was practiced by prehistoric cultures of the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods as well.
@attractthecrows' Space Mythology
This is the OG post, the OMG post, the one that made me fall in love with the whole concept of space myth and space fairy tales.
(It inspired a whole writing WIP of mine, that's basically Jim Henson's The Storyteller in space. Working title: The Starryteller! )
# @secondlina's Laika Comic
This is lovely. I'm fascinated by Church Grims. And the idea of Laika as a Church Grim of orbit is fascinating to me.
The Great Moon Hoax!
Wikipedia:
The "Great Moon Hoax", also known as the "Great Moon Hoax of 1835", was a series of six articles published in The Sun (a New York newspaper), beginning on August 25, 1835, about the supposed discovery of life and civilization on the Moon. [...]The articles described animals on the Moon, including bison, single-horned goats, mini zebras, unicorns, bipedal tail-less beavers and bat-like winged humanoids ("Vespertilio-homo") who built temples.
The sacred tongue and jawbone of St. Anthony
This is just weird. They're relics of Saint Anthony of Padua, and they're kept in... a reliquary spacesuit helmet? And the thing next to them looks like his spaceship? I want it to have adventures.
Astronautical Tattoos
@lucybellwood did a diagram of traditional sailor tattoos. She was also the guest of the Weird History Podcast, and talked about hypothetical astronautical tattoos. We can dream!
I was talking with a friend yesterday and he was really distressed that the week before, he'd had a nervous breakdown (his term, not mine). He was confused because objectively, his life looks good. He had walked away from an incredibly toxic job. His new business is going well, he's in a healthy relationship with his girlfriend, money isn't a problem, he's working on his second book and first comic book, and he's like 'but there's SO much less stress in my life than last month'.
I don't see a lot of people talking about this, so I will: your body will move heaven and earth to keep you going in a stressful situation, but the minute it deems you 'safe', it will collapse.
Ask every teacher, who gets sick in June, right after the school year. Ask why people get sick during winter holidays. It's not the cold. It's the fact that suddenly the pressure of the grind and stress of life has lifted for a second, and your body goes FINALLY and just...flops. We blame the weather because pointing out that our jobs are literally causing so much stress that we get sick? tsk tsk capitalism won't like that.
It happened to me after I got full tenure. I thought the clouds would part, angels would sing and butterflies would land on my nose, and my life would turn into a Hallmark movie.
I got...so sick. So incredibly sick. I had a rash break out that no one knew what it was--went to a specialist dermatologist in the city, went to the ER, urgent care, everything. SO much bloodwork. So many tests. I was tested for incredibly rare diseases, from every tick borne disease to rare tropical jungle rot. I went to a naturopath who told me to eat nothing but avocados for two weeks. (Yeah you do weird shit when you're desperate: PS Avocados and balsamic vinegar are a GOATed combo). Thousands of dollars (thank GOD I have insurance) Nothing worked. I was itchy, hot, weak, mind fogged to the point where I could barely drive, and run down...and then after a month, it just cleared up. It wasn't that the cortisone suddenly worked. It was all me. My body LITERALLY broke down from stress the minute it felt I was no longer in danger. And it processed that shit, and I got better.
I wonder now that if I'd just..stayed home and rested if I'd've gotten better faster.
We know animals do this, especially cats. Mask and mask and mask the struggle...till they feel safe.
That's what happened to my friend: the crushing stress was lifted and his body was like JESUS CHRIST FINALLY and then just...all that built up shit came crashing through.
It helped (I think) for him to hear this and to hear that it was temporary and actually a sign that his body felt safe enough to let go.
I don't know, maybe someone else might need to hear this. Because it feels like a kick in the crotch, it feels like 'come ON life was finally starting to get good, why NOW?!' it feels like god is punishing you for daring to step into happiness.
I know that, because that's how I felt. I spent years being afraid of being 'too happy' lest...I don't even fucking know would stop it. I understood, deeply, the old Chinese superstition, the old Italian superstition (funny how so many cultures believed this, right?) that you should not be too happy or else the gods are gonna mess with you. (Or in the case of Italians, someone's gonna malocchio your ass).
Anyway, that's what it is, and once you realize it, really realize it, it really does help. Maybe.
jbbartram-illu
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