1) IMHO, Master Of The Maelstrom's Plot Was "ok", But The Characters And Interactions Between Them Were

“The Radiant was beautiful. Not handsome, but beautiful. Perfection had rendered his features almost androgynous.

He turned towards them, his eyes burning like miniature suns. He leaned forward, setting his boots on the deck. He wore what had once been a suit of Crusade-pattern power armour. Shaggy white fur was wrapped about his greaves and the vambraces of his gauntlets. His chest-plate had been decorated with a grotesque mural depicting Fulgrim’s moment of apotheosis. One of his shoulder-plates had become fused and twisted into the shape of a leering feminine face. The face whispered softly as the Radiant rose to his feet.

A daemon slid past him, tittering. He took the claw it proffered and they spun in a brief, courtly dance. The daemon clicked its fangs in disappointment as he brought its claw to his lips for a kiss of polite dismissal.”

－ Fabius Bile: Primogenitor, Josh Reynolds

P. S. Working on all these microscopic details was hellish and took many hours, but hey, one of the most imposing Chaos Lords ever deserves no less!

/Feel free to reblog on Tumblr. Do not post on other social media without my consent, thank you!/

Here is a sea serpent Fulgrim on Mermay!

Since Fulgrim's foster father Coryn named him after the water-bringer god of Chemos, I think this image really suits him!

The theme of water, in fact, appears several times in the Emperor's Children history. According to Telemachon Lyras, an entire race of spirits once lived in the oceans of Chemos:

“Chemosian legend tells us that our world once had seas and oceans, in an age when Chemos’s sun burned bright enough to inspire a wealth of life. The Nayad were a species of water spirits charged with watching over the oceans. They sang to the beasts of the deepest waters, and their songs soothed our world’s soul. When their music finally came to an end, the oceans dried up and the sun grew darker in the dusty heavens. Chemos itself mourned the loss of their songs.”

Not to mention the fact that Fabius named his daughter Melusine - just like the mermaid/lamia-like spirit of fresh water from European folklore.

/Feel free to reblog on Tumblr. Do not post on other social media without my consent, thank you!/

"The Phoenician: Illustration by an Unknown Remembrancer"

Slightly inspired by the Fayum mummy portraits.

Feel free to reblog on Tumblr. Do not post on other social media without my consent, thank you!

Me, re-reading novels about genocidal batshit crazy transhuman war criminals for the nth time, because it helps me take my mind off reality for at least a couple of hours:

"The Garden of Pleasure and Pain"

Maybe this son of Fulgrim is in bliss with his daemonette lover on some warp-infested ship, like Quarzhazat, or maybe on some daemon-world in the Eye of Terror - no one can say for sure...

I wanted to capture the scaring essence of Slaanesh. At first glance, you think you're seeing something beautiful, until you take a closer look. But it's too late - your soul is already in the clutches of the Youngest God. Forevermore.

/Feel free to reblog on Tumblr. Do not post on other social media without my consent, thank you!/

Yeah, this book was a huge disappointment. I waited so long for it to come out, and all for this? A boring plot, mostly uninteresting empty characters who could have been interesting, but they were just killed! Not to mention that the characters didn't feel like legionnaires of the Third at all. You could easily cross out "Emperor's Children" and write "random SM Imperial Chapter, gone renegade", and personally I wouldn't notice the difference. In the end, Xanthine began to irritate me so terribly that I wanted to punch him in the face! I don't understand what happened to the author: A More Perfect Union was a great story! It was as if someone forced him to write nonsense. Or maybe I just overestimated him.

Lord of Excess was a big letdown for me. But it made me realize one very surprising thing: McNeill isn't such a bad EC-author! There are far worse ones out there!

At least Graham had two shining moments of brilliance in Crimson King (immediately dropped the ball afterwards, but, hey, babysteps!).

So, let me forget about McCormick. He gave me hope with a really good short story and a good first half of a novel. But now, with this second half of the novel riddled with logical inconsistencies, holes in the story big enough to drive a landraider through without scratching the paint and the endless same-same of "betrayal-idiocy-depravity", I need him to walk away from anything EC as briskly as possible. Let my poor guys bask in the fading glory of Reynolds and the few things Kyme, Wraight and St.Martin wrote. Maybe someday some author will come along to carry Josh's torch further! But not today.

At the moment it's fanfiction and fanart for me.

(Pic of Lucius just because I want to. And because McCormick didn't let me keep any good chars. He destroyed them all. To shreds, you say?)

I respect the fashion statment made here

Hey, I just wanted to say that your works on AO3 made my days when I read them. I said it once under one of your fics and I want to it here - again. I remember reading Chasing Perfection and Til the Stars Grow Cold until the sun came up because I couldn’t put it down.

I was also harassed by these aggressive menchildren for nothing. I felt sad. But then I thought: they literally can't do anything valuable in their lives. Can they do smth like you? Like us? Nah, they can only beef. The lack of intelligence is the worst punishment ever.

So I typed up a long response with facts and lore snippets about how things change in the 40k universe all the time and was ready to post it as a response to a Facebook thread going insane about the new Woman Custode. But then I thought better of it and deleted it.

These people crying about it dont care about either lore or facts. They have their hate and misogyny and that is all that matters. They love to make others just as miserable as themselves and I refuse to engage in that.

Its like the old saying, “Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their leven and beat you with experience.

So what can we do that is actually constructive to meet these idiots? Do it with love, with happiness and joy. Trolls crack in the sunlight after all.

If you have a Facebook or Twitter account, go to the post and write how happy and excited you are about these releases. Show others they arent alone in wanting this. And of course, the bottom line, if you have the expendable money, buy the things you like.

And if someone responds negatively to your comment, just block them and move on. You won't miss them.

I registered on Tumblr three long years ago and never posted anything. So, what will my first post be about? Something of current interest. Let it be a female Custodian, why not?

BY SLAANESH, THE OFFENDED GUYS' ARSES ARE BURNING SO BRIGHT THAT THERE'S NO NEED FOR THE ASTRONOMICAN IN THE IMPERIUM NIHILUS ANYMORE! *ba-dum tss*

And the vast majority of them - who would've guess! - are straight men. Mind you, I don't want to talk shit about all cishet men - there're lots of good open-minded guys (like my close friends), but their "kin" certainly don't do them justice. Imagine: one single woman in a previously all-male faction can ruin the whole hobby for you! Really? Have you really liked it that much in the first place?

One dude basically typed the whole-ass lecture in reply to my jesting (!) comment (in which I didn't even write that I wanted Girlstodes! I just wrote that ppl, who wanted them, are laughing now!). He acted like some overzealous Dark Apostle. Why? I dunno.

"The Custodes contain the Holy Emperor's gene-seed and are breeded to be loyal only to him! That's why they can't be women!" said this dude... Sorry, WHAT? MFer, your logic is deader than Horus and his soul is fckn obliterated!

Then he wrote that a petition with several thousand signatures needs to be created so that the Custodians remain an exclusively male faction, that GW tries to please the "screaming minority" and that Dan Abnett needs to take his pills. Yes, he was dead-serious.

These guys try to justify themselves this way: "I hate this idea because GW made a retcon and this is against their lore - not because I'm misogynistic and hate women (a-ha, I totally believe you)." Well, I bet that we, girls, wouldn't have started the whole barbaric shit-storm if GW had made the Brother of Battle! Let's be real: you don't care about the lore (or I would've 100% respected your opinion) - you use it as a shield. You only care about your ego - so fragile that it can be broken by one single blow, like a crystal glass.

I can understand why some ppl don't like the female Astartes: the Primarch's gene-seed is required for their creation and it's only male-compatible canonically. But the Custodians are created in a completely different way! Their genetics is altered on the molecular level with some unreal and long-forgotten science-sorcery. The Emperor basically made the pinnacle of human creation. Only the men can be the "pinnacle", eh? The duality of life as it is, lmao.

I have an intense love/hate relationship with Lucius. I really like him as a character, but as a person? Oh boy, even my heretical Slaaneshi arse can't forgive what he did to my poor sweet boys Saul and Solomon. This was too low even for a traitor. And the fact that Tarvitz actually loved this bastard to the very end ripped my heart to shreds.

I found this excerpt in the Liber Hereticus:

Yes, Saul's last thoughts were of Lucius, and the latter's betrayal caused Tarvitz the worst pain he had ever felt.

No, I definitely didn't take 4th degree emotional damage from a couple of sentences, haha, ofc not...