From StuartL - NSFW Children's Books - Children's Books and Sarah's Library Cart - 60 Points

Hello again.

With the Fantasy Books taken care of, I'm going to hop back on Sarah's Library Cart and zip off to the next stop in the library. 

    I offer this maid as payment for the journey. Another Reaper mini, this time one of their civilian minis that will probably see the table as either scene dressing in a game, or an NPC in an RPG.

    I also painted up a little piece of terrain. This is a stone animal enclosure from Warlord Games' Rorke's Drift set that I bought years ago. The pen is resin and mounted on a CD. The gate is made from pieces of plastic sprues that I trimmed down to fit.

    It's not very big, but should fit onto a wide variety of tables as a piece of handy scatter terrain. I'm not certain exactly how much of a terrain cube this is, it isn't very big and I don't want to have to do the maths to calculate it, so I will simply ask for 1 point.

    For the next library section to visit, it is off to the Children's Books section. There doesn't seem to be a day that goes by where the news isn't talking about something or other being banned, cancelled or removed from schools, libraries and public access. Some things are removed because they are may offend people from different backgrounds, others because some politician is trying to score political points and others because the writer said something mean on social media. It is hard to keep up. 

    Personally, I am of the opinion that you shouldn't read something that you don't like, but unless a book is egregiously wrong and offensive, it should still be available for people to look at. (Perhaps with suitable warnings if people might find the contents hard to stomach). For the longest time, children's stories were pretty horrendous, often serving as dire warnings as to what happens to naughty kids, or as an education in the real world and all of its horrors.

 

    For my entry to the Children's Books, I offer the Little Mermaid. Not the Disney version, but the Hans Christian Anderson version. I painted up a similar model for last year's challenge (https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com/2023/02/from-stuartl-fish-fishmen-and-menfish.html), but found that I had a couple of models from the same set still untouched in my to-do pile. This one is a little NSFW, but I think we are all mature enough not to giggle too loudly.

    As with the models last year, this is a Reaper Bones mini. I don't know why this one is topless, the others were all wearing something. I'm no expert on mermaid biology, but I assume that they are mammalian in nature, or at least the sculptor believed so. I went for a blue skin tone to match my previous entries and to avoid any of the controversy surrounding the most recent live action movie. People truly will complain about anything.

    To accompany the mermaid, I also finished up the set with this regal looking monarch figure.

    And here we have the pair together. Both of the figures are fairly large, being well over 40mm tall before you include the rocky bases. 

For scoring, we have:

1x28mm mini = 5 points

1xsmall terrain piece = 1 point

2x40mm minis = 14 points

Library Cart = 20 points

Children's Books = 20 points.

TOTAL = 60 Points

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A great entry, Stuart. I like your milkmaid and animal pen, and your Little Mermaid (with Monarch) are excellent (love the swirling red hair). I also liked your comments on book censorship. 

I have to be honest that one of the reasons I chose 'Libraries' as the theme this year was not only because it was super-easy to pop themes into (certainly a factor!), but also in recognition of the unique and invaluable service they provide to society (and I'm speaking specifically about public libraries here). When allowed to follow their mandate (a important distinction in today's environment of ever-growing censorship) a public library gives access to knowledge to all members of society, no matter their standing or the topic of interest, so I feel strongly that they need to be protected and nurtured. Anyway, off the soapbox, thanks very much for the fine entry, Stuart!

- Curt