Johnny Come Lately Liebster Thingee.

Johnathan Marshall at Meandering Shade has nominated me for a Leibster Award, which is more a "How-do-you-do-you-seem-interesting-here-are-some-questions" chain letter thingee than an actual award, but "award" is easier to type. Which is totally neat. I love awards that aren't actually awards and are more low key.

(As an aside, I've had a breakthrough and now know where the 'create link' button is on blogger.)

Liebster Award Instructions:

• Link back to the blogger that nominated you
• Reveal 11 truths about yourself
• Answer the 11 questions written  for you by the person that nominated you
• Choose 11 other blogs that have less than 200 followers to be nominated next
• Write 11 questions for these new nominees to answer
• leave a comment on the nominees blog or message them to make them aware of the nomination

11 Truths some related to gaming, some not

1.  I suffer from depression. The longer I'm alive, the more I think that depression is the ocean on which my continents of personality form, shift and get swallowed up by.

2. I used to think space marines were space skaven because of the beakie helmets and I used to think Eldar were some hideous alien creature because of the way the D-cannon crewmember looked like it were peeling it's mask back. I have an un-natural love of Wraithlords because of that one picture with the busted wall and the cigar smoke. WD 100 has a lot to answer for.

3. Jes Goodwin is my default favourite sculptor because of Skaven and Eldar, my two favourite forces. I have his Saint Celestine in the pile, and I need to make an order for some of the Asgard sculpts of his.

4. I immigrated from NZ to the US to get married. I met my wife at the end of 2007 and asked her to marry me about 4 months later before we'd ever met.

5. I am a lousy arguer and debater. I despise conflict and avoid it like the plague.

6. I am a pacifist. Sometimes I wake up and wonder if wargaming fits with this pacifism. It does, because fantasy wargaming is fiction. Fiction never hurt anyone. I don't have to tell a bunch of Dark Elf families that mum/dad isn't coming home. I don't see limbs hewn or children cryng because they've been pressganged into fighting. Compared to the real world wargaming is damned civilised.

7. I am a thin shell of cynical around a big, pulsing, gushy romantic idealist. A big, disappointed idealist, but an idealist none-the-less.

8. I am a gamer with a writing problem, or is that vice versa? I have written plays and many false starts for novels. Depression has put a crimp on so many things.

9. I love books. I tend to read deeply with authors, and will devour a whole bunch of their work until I can't handle it anymore. I am stuck firmly in the 'B's with excursions elsewhere. William Burroughs, Borges, Samuel Beckett, JG Ballard, Ray Bradbury. Other writers: Lovecraft, Harold Pinter, Margaret Atwood, Peter Milligan, Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Calvino, Jane Austen, Dashiel Hammett, Michael Chabon and many others. I'm not a traditional fantasy fan, what interests me is slightly off kilter, slightly weird fictions.

10. I have worked as a nanny for the last 18 months and will soon begin work in a start-up preschool. I love kids and had decided to do Drama in University instead of early childhood. My life has circled in on itself and I find myself in the job area I'd considered and decided against nearly 20 years ago.

11. I am a church-going atheist. My wife is Christian, and I am a godless immigrant heathen who is supportive of my wife's beliefs. The church we attend is a progressive, open and affirming congregationalist church where, while I don't share the big belief, I have discovered that my socialist beliefs have some fascinating concordances with what Jesus said and did in the gospels. My lack of belief isn't going to change, but this church is a place where I feel welcome in my difference, and this is something I have never had in any other Christian church.

11 Questions from Meandering Shade.

1. What attracted you to your hobby?
   
   This is a twofer. What attracted me to RPGs and then miniatures and warhammer was reading White Dwarfs and Fighting Fantasy books that my Mum(!) had bought for herself. Seeing 'Eavy Metal when it started and the full colour ads for Citadel minis with their stat lines and such had huge impact.
   
   What attracted me to fantasy? My mum (again!) always read fantastical stories to me and my brother. Stuff like Diana Wynn Jones, the Phantom Toll Booth, the Hobbit etc and something of that stuck. Later, my Dad introduced me to Stephen King and Clive Barker. White Dwarf gave me Lovecraft, 2000AD and so much in the way of art and ideas.
2. What hobby goal would you like to achieve?
   
   Currently: finish my Dark Elf metal army.
   
   Long Term: To have as many old 3ed miniature armies as I can with a bunch of scenery for a table. Chaos, Skaven and Dark Elf for certain.
3. Do you have an interesting/amusing hobby anecdote to share?
   
   More an image to share. I accidentally almost-fully sat on a unit of plastic skaven clanrats with spears and when I straightened up a bunch of spears were stuck in my right bum cheek. I looked like a looney tunes character who'd had a run in with a porcupine.
4. What was the last book you read?
   
   Sadly, my depression comes with a lack of reading. I last read 'Gun with Occasional Music' by Johnathan Lethem, in February.
    
5. What inspires you most?
   
   For the hobby: it's seeing other people's current miniatures and projects (I love the Oldhammer FB page for this), and also going back to the 'source' materials (White Dwarfs, rulesets, catalogues, miniatures) of 25-35 years ago with adult eyes. I love the mingling of my memory of being 7 reading this stuff with the experience of 30 years reading this stuff. It isn't nostalgia, it's something else. I'm finding so much more that I missed the first time round.
6. What finished piece are you most proud of?
   
   I think that the miniatures I have painted for Chico's challenges are all ones that I have been immensely proud of. With the subject selected for me, I've been a little more deliberate in thinking about what I was doing with them. Each challenge I've tried something different technically. Blending, or taking more time with highlights, or using certain combinations of colours.
   
   I am most proud of the maruader dwarf. It was the first time I felt mostly in control of the process and deliberate in what I was doing. From the eyes and face to the colours I was going to use. It all fell into place. I would describe my general painting style as loose and scruffy, but this was my cleanest work.
   :
   
7. Your desert island discs, 5 albums, what are they?
   
   Talking Head's Fear of Music, Portishead's Third, A best of David Bowie disc, Dimmer's I Believe You are a Star, Don McGlashan's Wonderful Year.
8. How would you spend your days if you didn't have to worry about money/career?
   
   Writing. Painting miniatures. Hanging with family. Travelling.
9. What is your pet peeve?
   
   Since coming to the US, it's the lack of foot paths. There's a real dismissal of people who don't drive cars where I am.
10. Do you have a favourite historical period?
    
    The twentieth century from 1945 to the second before the internet took off. The internet has radically changed how we interact with the world, in a way I don't like. I'm tactile and my memory is visual landmark based and I mourn the shift from paper to pixel. My experience of film, tv and music hasn't changed (which is a function of just how old recording of media is: I imagine that there were a number of people bemoaning the switch from stage and bandstand to screen and speaker). I still watch TV on a screen and listen to music from a speaker. I am simply very attached to the printed paper page.
11. What fantasy world/setting would you most like to experience first hand?
    
    Ha! The sensible part of me says 'None. I don't want to be molested by a Broo, spiked for insulting Tsoylanu nobility, eaten by an Old One, interrogated by an Ordo Inquisitor, or mutated by the wastes of chaos.'
    
    But... I would love to experience Glorantha. The way life is infused with myth and magic is fascinating to me. And ducks. Musnt't forget the ducks.

These things always put me in a bind, I am relatively new to this blogging game (my previous blog was about play writing fergawdsake, ended two years ago, and in the end I think I was the only person viewing it) and I'm generally a Johnny-come-lately and a lot of people have already answered the Liebster award call.

I'm not a big one for this sort of thing and I'm kind of awkward and I'm going to be backwards about it, I'm just going to post links to people who have answered Liebsters.

Links to Liebstered Folks:

Chico at Oldhammer on a Budget
The Responsible One's Wargaming Blog
Suber at Old School Workshop
Goblin Lee's Miniatures Blog
Colin at The Leadpile
Infrequent ramblings of a casual wargamer and hobbyist
Warhammer for Adults
Steve at Somewhere the tea's getting cold