Brent: A Pictorial History of Blogging

8 Minute Read

Oct 14 2013

Today’s Terrible Tuesday features the life and times of Brent, a Strictly Average hobbyist who writes a fairly regular feature on Bell of Lost Souls.

I’ve been absent from these lofty digital pages for two weeks now. Turns out, Games Workshop just released a series of stunning miniatures, people talked about the price before buying more stunning miniatures, and Games Workshop is about to release a new set of stunning miniatures sometime next month.

Business as usual then. I was feeling rather tired, for reasons I’ll come to right at the end, and considered begging off for another week to get some rest. Then, inspiration!

Rather than just telling you, naturally I decided to go the long way around and write a “Here is Your Life” bit. Except about my life. Except that it’s only about the hobby part.

The Misty Past

I’m not sure when I started taking pictures of miniatures, but way back then Dreadnoughts came on square bases. I’m guessing that timestamp means 1999. That’s about right, I guess. I’ve long since put my Harbinger Space Marines in the dip to use for another project.

This is the first bit of freehand I’ve ever attempted. I liked it for years, but then it took years to realize he only had three bones in his hand.

The end of what?

In the back is the bunker Mike Butcher made as part of a terrain collection I purchased from him when he was living in Oklahoma. I lost it in the divorce. I’m still bitter.

Lone Wolf, Dallas

My first really big tournament was Lone Wolf in Dallas, Texas, a Warhammer event. I think this was around 2007 or so. My Beastmen sucked it up big time, as normal. There were a lot of shots like this; cannonball to the face. Notice the underside? This was the “Era of Dipping,” not to be confused with bagging or drooping.

Thankfully, washes make the shading process a lot less risky.

An amazing piece of work. Each model had a light underneath it that shown through. As I recall, the owner said he went through a lot of batteries, but man was it a labor of love. Stunning.

I have a crap-ton of pictures of other people’s toys. I was, and still am, blown away by the talent on display whenever I go to a tournament. It doesn’t matter if guys like Rob from Spiky Bits or Larry from Bell of Lost Souls are out there with high-end, professional cameras, I’m still snapping away with my camera.

This was one of my favorites, modeled after Monty Python.

Hard Boyz, Chicago

Interestingly, I ran into Goatboy at Lone Wolf. I talked to him a bit. He didn’t know me from Adam, but he spared time for anyone who talked with him. Bell of Lost Souls probably wasn’t nearly as big back then, but you wouldn’t know it. He was, and is, the most popular single gamer out there.

At Hard Boyz – what, 2008 or so? – I ran into Nick, who after winning this even with his Leafblower Imperial Guard list, probably was the least popular guy on the ‘Net for awhile.

This was the Battle Bunker, Chicago. My buddy Big Whit and I made it to the finals, so decided to make the trip. Overall, the event was a huge letdown. My understanding was there was a lot of door prizes the year before…

…but the only prizes beyond the weapon of your choice went to the two guys whose armies were destroyed by the falling table. The big guy on the left had an unreal-nice army, which was pinned together for support. It shattered like so much glass.

They each got a Baneblade, but it wasn’t worth the effort of putting that army back together. I still feel sorry for him.

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Here’s Nick playing the Greenskins for the top spot. The Ork player put me out in Round I with a really brutal Trukk Boyz list. The two Nobs Mobs beat face using individual equipment and the Pain Boy to keep them in the fight. Nice guy, to boot.

So Nick won. By now, because of my still small blog, Strictly Average, I was at least recognizable to players from Texas. I got a call from Larry of Bell of Lost Souls asking me to send him a pic to use for the feature.

There were mirrors everywhere, so naturally I took odd pictures of myself to boot.

BoLSCon

The first BoLSCon; probably my all-time favorite tournament. Here’s Jawaballs’s army, which luckily I got to play. I was already net-stalking him, which was just perfect.

This army was all over the forums that year. Mike Strange is a pretty amazing talent, but perhaps more surprisingly was he just beat face with a list that was widely regarded as poor. Someone should have mentioned that to him.

The game with Jawaballs was really close. It came down to his squad beating me in combat then running me down. Naturally, I took a picture with my models knocked over.

Because it’s a game, that’s why.

Jawaballs!

And Round 7, a fairly tired and probably slightly tipsy Goatboy. He asked if I was down for an HQ brawl to decide the game.

Using his Evil Powers and promising me some gropings, I was down.

And there is another picture of my models on the table.

My Big Break

There’s a fairly standard misconception that I got my shot at writing for Bell of Lost Souls by knowing some of these original guys, or living in Austin. Not true.

I got my shot at writing for Bell by hounding Larry mercilessly ~Editor’s note: It WAS MERCILESS! I repeatedly introduced myself during that first tournament. At the time Strictly Average was doing okay numbers, and I was writing for Blood of Kittens on the side. Larry eventually relented, sending me this love note.

And that’s the history, for what it’s worth. I got to bring my own brand of quirky-hobby-goodness to Terrible Tuesday mornings. I hope people generally enjoy reading these articles, but I get it that some don’t. All in good fun.

The End?

So what prompted this stroll down memory lane?

I’ve been fairly busy with real life these last few months. I was bucking for a big promotion at work, which eventually I received. The job came with a move and a slew of additional responsibilities – and I’ve been having a blast! I’ve been lining up my career for years to get this opportunity; it’s been exhilarating.

And tiring. The additional hours and the longer commute have taken some getting used to. I’ve been getting home exhausted and just crawling into bed. Suffice it to say, I’ve taken a bit of a pass on hobby time of any type, including writing this article.

I might have taken a pass again tonight, until I saw this series of Anonymous comments on Strictly Average.

Your suck. LOL 😀

I’ve had a particularly pernicious Troll stalking me lately, occasionally leaving love notes like a sprinkling of random turds.

Are you aware of the Dunning-Kruer effect? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect Of course you are not! How silly of me. You, my dear Brent, are a moron. You are simply incompetent in every way and yet do not know it. You are crap as evidenced by this and every post you have ever made. You are a bad writer in that you fail to educate, entertain or proved anything original. Please go die and we would all be better off.

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A Superfan like this one really knows how to inspire! Who can be tired when the material just comes to you? I hadn’t looked at the blog for weeks, much less commented. But there they were, on three different articles.

What, no snarky and pretentious comment to me calling you out on your garbage “painting”? Did you run out of your eternal optimism in the face of your perpetual incompetence or did your conformation bias simple edit out that you SUCK AT EVERY SINGLE ASPECT OF 40K. Or perhaps you mistook the internet’s hatred of your mediocrity for positive reinforcement.
When was the last time a stranger said anything nice about you? When did someone you did not know or know of you come up to you and compliment you on your painting, playing or writing. Never is my guess.

This is my favorite. “Did you run out of your eternal optimism..?” It’s a lovely compliment wrapped up in middle-school-girl mean.

Way back when, I named my blog Strictly Average. It was a self-deprecating comment on my own lazy painting, but also a double-entendre that never fails to make me laugh.

My hobby is about having a good time. It’s about meeting people and attending tournaments and being continually amazed by this community and what it is capable of. It’s about working on projects I’ll probably never finish and thinking about projects I’d like to start. It’s listening to Black Library MP3’s on the way to my new job. It’s my long-suffering wife, ready for me to finish this article so we can watch Boardwalk Empire.

My hobby is a pretty positive place to be.

That’s that. Another stroll down pictorial way. As always, thoughts? Comments? Hugs and gropings?

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