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Utopia Talk / Politics / so very wrong on so very many levels
Seb
Member
Tue May 22 06:28:57
https://warhammeradventures.com/
Seb
Member
Tue May 22 06:31:19
I get the need to constantly expand ones product lines, but kids literature aimed at 8 year olds set in the WH40k universe...

I mean, the whole point of the setting is everything is fundamentally wrong. Even the "good" guys are neo-fascist religious fundamentalist.

Save this for teenagers who (ought) to be able to appreciate the whole thing is supposed to be deeply ironic.
jergul
large member
Tue May 22 07:55:23
Scarred for life from the looks of the illustrations.
Seb
Member
Tue May 22 08:35:16
Genuinely thought this was a joke just based on the illustrations, which yes, are bonkers.

Ok, I mean, 12 is fine to be playing 40k, but unless they have radically changed the fluff, I cannot imagine how you write a novel in the 40k setting that would work and not be utter shite or morally horrific.

The whole point is that everyone is horrible, there are no good guys, and the whole thing is deeply steeped in bitter, nihilistic, cynicism. 40K worked best when it was tongue firmly in cheek.

I don't get how you can make a novel for an 8 year old in this setting that doesn't either dramatically alter the setting, or isn't basically going to end up trying to portray a violent, fascist, theocratic, genocidal regime as the moral high ground.

As for 12 year olds, the fluff is fine for a couple of paragraphs, but given the limitations of the setting, I don't really see how you could get decent novels out of this.
hood
Member
Tue May 22 08:43:51
Have you met 12 year olds recently? They're not exactly connoisseurs of good story telling. See: transformer movies were made by actual 12 year olds.
jergul
large member
Tue May 22 08:49:04
Cue deplore the youth?
hood
Member
Tue May 22 08:55:06
No, just undeveloped taste. Which one should expect from a preteen.
Seb
Member
Tue May 22 11:10:47
Hood:

The original transformer movie is so much better than bay's.

I tend to view the point of parenthood is to help children learn. 12 year olds are perfectly able to appreciate a good story.

I'd start with pointing them to actual fiction rather than thinly disguised advertising.

(And which parents would knowingly want to expose their children to the bottomless money sink that's games workshop).

Seb
Member
Tue May 22 11:16:50
"on Saturday he ate through one slice of chocolate cake, one icecream cone, your immortal soul, one slice of Swiss cheese. That night he revelled in tormenting darkness, where you will reside now for all eternity.

The next day he ate through a nice green leaf and felt much better.

He still hungered, but he wasn't a little demon anymore, he was a big fat demon. He built himself a special house out of skulls and flayed, still living faces of the damned. He stayed inside for two timeless eons, then ripped his way through the thin skein of reality from the madding void beyond, and he was a terrible nameless god upon ehosee vissage all who behold went mad'
McKobb
Member
Tue May 22 17:32:44
That franchise has been dying since the late 90's so just a dollar grab.
Seb
Member
Tue May 22 17:39:02
The sales figures suggest otherwise.

Have they licensed game of thrones yet?
Hrothgar
Member
Tue May 22 21:35:10
I'm trying to think of a popular culture parallel so non 40k fans can grasp the insanity of this... I suppose like making tween focused stories of Game of Thrones.
hood
Member
Tue May 22 23:06:39
"The original transformer movie is so much better than bay's."

This one? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092106/
If so, never seen it.


"I tend to view the point of parenthood is to help children learn. 12 year olds are perfectly able to appreciate a good story."

I don't disagree. They are perfectly able to appreciate a good story, but they are also less adept at identifying good stories from bad ones. Surely you've noticed the absolute deluge of awful teen fiction making its way from book to movie/tv formats? Hell, even Harry Potter was pretty crappy story telling. It just happened to be encased in a wonderful setting that successfully covered the less than stellar plots.


"I'm trying to think of a popular culture parallel so non 40k fans can grasp the insanity of this"

Alien vs. Predator without the humans? Warcraft if it were only horde? ... Transformers? ;p
Dukhat
Member
Wed May 23 01:24:01
Games Workshop has been hemmoraging money and basically sells the license to anyone. Some of the games that have come out have been quite good though so it's really just a matter of reading reviews.
hood
Member
Wed May 23 07:27:06
Vermintide has been great. Both of them.
Hrothgar
Member
Wed May 23 21:02:54
They need to make a turn based RPG squad cover/move/shoot type game for 40k. In the vein of Xcom. That would be such a blast.
McKobb
Member
Wed May 23 21:54:31
A squad leader type game composed of scum from the wastelands of space might be cool. A mercenary leader with contracts for jobs against players and AI
Aeros
Member
Wed May 23 22:31:38
Sen, you are very close to an epiphany here. May the light of the God Emperor pierce the chaos.

In a culture war, the goal is not an economic one. The goal is a psychological one. To seize the facets of culture that are useful and widely viewed, and coopt them to your side for the purposes of shifting the thought of society.

Feminists, SJWs and Liberally minded people have been after 40k for years. It is problematic on so many levels, from the idea that religious belief is a force strong enough to stave of the extinction of humanity, to the more mundane factors of everyone needing to be armed lest they become food for those out to consume either their flesh or soul.

Thus heresy began to take root in the Imperium. It started with whispers. That perhaps the Imperium of Man is an ironic representation, and not an accurate portrayal of how society would function is presented with genocidal forces on all sides and following horrific social and scientific collapse when confronted by actual demons.

These heretics do not like the Imperium, as it represents ideals of total self sacrifice to the common good, of the need to preserve belief and worship in the divine, and in the total realization that life is suffering but it is better to suffer then to die.

Also Slaneesh is far too accurate a depiction of the modern LGBT movement.

Suffice to say 40k needed to be seized, twisted, and remade into something it's not. But the Emperor protects and soon enough exterminatus will be exacted up the heretics.
hood
Member
Wed May 23 22:39:05
Aeros just never passes up an opportunity to spout nonsense.
Aeros
Member
Wed May 23 22:40:56
It's not nonsense when it's true. 40k was always going to be the next battleground in the culture war. The social justice crowd cannot help themselves. This is the opening salvo.
hood
Member
Wed May 23 22:47:25
95% of what you say is nonsense.
jergul
large member
Thu May 24 04:57:48
Aeros
Its about it being appropriate for kids. I have a print edition of warhammer from workshop games for God's sake.
Seb
Member
Thu May 24 07:53:24
Jesus Christ.

This is precisely why Aeros is too immature for wH40k.

As someone who played that back on 2nd edition (you know, when it was propper and you have to roll a bajillion dice to work out each gunshot: roll to hit, roll to wound, roll dammage, roll modifiers, roll armour save) - I feel that Aeros has fundamentally misunderstood WH40k.

It is not remotely intended to be serious: it is not "yay, religion holds mankind together and staves off extinction". Quite the opposite.

Like Judge dread, it is an ironic and sarcastic take and very obviously supposed to be quite tongue in cheek.

Further, and perhaps not so apparent in my opening posts as I didn't think it needed to be spelled out:

1. Watering it down to make kid friendly stories ruins the joke.

2. You literally cannot make compelling stories in the context of such a bleakly nihilistic setting. Indeed, that's the whole joke: everybody dies pointless and random deaths: it's a setting about endless war where everybody dies, because it's the backstory for a tabletop war game, and getting your army wiped out by a random virus outbreak (ok, they got rid of that card to be fair) needs to be an entertaining aspect of a game played in part as a role play rather than a frustrating loss.

3. My god have your read the fluff? The principle reason for keeping this out of the hands of kids is because it is really, really bad! It's just enough to give the basest level of meaning to a complicated chess game.

4. And woe betide anyone who takes it seriously... look at your post.

Seb
Member
Thu May 24 07:59:29
WH40k is fine as long as you understand that there are not supposed to be any good guys.

With the possible exception of the emperor but understanding that the Imperium is pretty much the opposite of what he intended, having been taken over by corrupt, venal religious fundamentalists.
Seb
Member
Thu May 24 08:03:21
Very much a product of 80's British culture and sci-fi dystopianism.

The roots of the Imperium are in part a sci-fi punk satire on British society, complete with a corrupt fusty fake-aristocratic government supported by an established church steeped in cant.

Space Orks are skinheads hooligans - obsessed with fast bikes, chanting football hooligan songs...

I could go on.

Compare also to the projected British fasist state in V for vendetta.

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