Spite makes Right - The Lagrange Point Vol. I, Iss. 14

Vancouver-based game maker Will deManbey is a first time Kickstarter with Staked, a social deduction game in the vein of Resistance or Werewolf. As you might have guessed from the title, Staked is centered around vampires, and it features gorgeous, hand-drawn portraits for its many characters. The campaign wraps on October 30! Seasonally appropriate.

Spooky fare for younger audiences arrives in the form of Chai Jinxed, the next book from Ottawa author Emi Pinto. Pinto's book is a witchy good time for young readers aged 8 to 12, and tells the story of Misha, a young teamaker determined to reach the top of her class at Margaret’s Academy of Tea and Brewing. But a hex on her teamaking could hold Misha back. Chai Jinxed arrives at Harper Collins Canada October 22.

The Indigenous Walking Dead are coming, brought to us by Tlicho Dene (Northwest Territories) author Richard van Camp in his new graphic novel, Roth. With illustrator Christopher Shy, van Camp is launching a series of Indigenous zombie books called the Wheetago War, named for the flesh eating horrors of native legend. This book looks absolutely rad, and arrives from Renegade Arts on October 16.

And lastly, Inside Up Games, headed by Conor McGoey of Thunder Bay, is Kickstarting Ice and Idols, a game for two to four players. It's a competitive, quick-play experience where players take on the role of explorers racing to find idols and collect research points in a frozen ancient temple. Pathway tiles will shift, and the entire board can also rotate, making gameplay quick-changing and evolving. The Kickstarter wraps October 11!

A strange nerd confession: despite my near life-long love of Games Workshop miniatures, I have never painted a Space Marine.

They're the most iconic figures from the company's entire lineup, and remain one of the most-played factions of Warhammer 40,000. They've also served as the "demo" models at the store, with some years where they were even offered as a free sample to entice people into the dangerously addictive world of miniatures.

But for whatever reason, I just never felt compelled to paint one. Until now.

This here is my Battle-Brother from Inquisitor's 54m range. I decided to go with the colour scheme of the Crimson Fists chapter of Space Marines, because I like a chapter that actually values human lives and has a certain "underdog" status. I didn't do any conversion work on this model, mainly because there were limited parts produced that actually fit the Space Marine physique, but also just to keep things simple. First off, I primed him black.

From there, I followed a simple three-step process.

I adhered pretty closely to Games Workshop's suggested colours for Crimson Fists. The base coat was step one, with Kantor Blue as the main armour colour. From there, I shaded liberally with Nuln Oil, using Reikland Fleshshade for his face and Seraphim Sepia for the bits of cloth.

Lastly, I edge highlighted the armour, adding in some detailing on the face, weapons, and iconography. From there, it was a straightforward matter of tidying up any mistakes, going over some more details, then adding on some spare decals for the shoulder pad.

I can see why Space Marines were used as the "starter" model for GW stores. The simplicity of most of the model being one or two colours makes for a straightforward painting experience that yields pretty nice-looking results. I'm also quite pleased that he ended up looking very distinct from the better-known Ultramarines, with a shade of blue much darker than theirs.

There may be another Space Marine in my near future...

I've noticed lately, in and among all the various rhetoric about how B.C.'s election is a tight horserace, and how the B.C. Conservatives have all the momentum, and how people want change...

...not a single person has actually told me what the Conservatives would do to make their lives better.

Oh, there's plenty who will tell me that somehow, despite the B.C. NDP actually trying to tackle the housing crisis, unlike literally any other province, and despite Evy's administration being completely, utterly scandal-free, they just can't STAND this government.

Why? Well, that part usually varies, but centres on how life, for them, hasn't improved. They don't generally speak in specifics. Vague rants about cost of living. Taxes. "Wokeness."

Yet by any metric (not "Wokeness;" that's not a real metric, folks) B.C. has been turning slowly, painfully, around. We now have the highest per capita number of doctors per people. More housing is being built, and quickly. And we emerged from COVID-19 a lot more resilient than other provinces.

But still, the hate-on for the B.C. NDP persists.

And really, when you look at the reaction online, including polls, it's not hard to notice a certain pattern developing. For starters, there's the polling data that confirms mass confusion, with significant portions of right-wing voters incorrectly assuming that the B.C. election is actually their time to "vote against Trudeau," and that they're voting for Pierre Poilievre, not John Rustad — who a majority of voters couldn't even identify correctly.

That ignorance, and the frequent reference to Trudeau, suggests this election, like others, is rapidly becoming about one thing and one thing only: spite.

For the modern right-wing, it genuinely doesn't matter to them that their chosen party has offered little to nothing in the way of improving their futures. What matters is that liberals, lefties and "woke folk" are upset. What matters is hurting those who have had the audacity, in one way or another, to tell them what to do, whether that's COVID-19 vaccines, carbon taxes, confronting racist or sexist behaviour or even just suggesting they eat less meat or do even the slightest thing to improve the environment.

Conservatives in Canada now subsist on a steady diet of "fuck you for telling me what to do," and its now so core to their identity that little can be done to convince them otherwise.

It's easy to dismiss this growing level of spite-based politics as the natural cycle of elections. We often hear about how voters are much more likely to care about "voting out the bums" than they do about policy, and there's definitely something to that. It's not new that people will often vote AGAINST something rather than FOR something. Indeed, we have entire aphorisms about this. "Cutting off your nose to spite your face," for instance.

What is new, however, is the sheer level of sadistic glee, and utter disregard for basic facts. John Rustad, for instance, has miraculously shrugged off his legacy as a member of Christy Clark's government, which brought in so many of the issues the right-wing is railing against. I've seen multiple people screaming bloody murder about the Site C dam project, or the carbon tax, and Rustad helped usher in both.

But pointing out these facts never seems to move the needle.

So what will? Would anything?

Well, one obvious answer is that once Trudeau is out of government, and if Conservatives were to govern even more provinces, one has to think there'd be an inevitable course-correction in the opposite direction.

Or at least. One has to hope.

Who was it that said hope is stronger than fear?

I hope he was right.

That wraps up issue #14 of The Lagrange Point! If you enjoyed this little e-newsletter, please consider subscribing, or, if you're already subscribed, sharing it with a friend or family member!

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Until next Monday, thank you for reading!

-Tim