Is the drive for canonicity (or continuity) in fan cu toxic?

[Indefragable]

@mc warhammer but you hit it on the head.

 

The single biggest problem with BL—and the HH and SoT series are microcosms of this—is that there is no author. There is no definitive authorial voice. You’d think that would be like...the author....but it’s not. It’s not even the editor(s). It’s the company. Which is is a model company first and foremost. The entirety of BL’s catalogue is a glorified Saturday morning cartoon made to sell more toys.

 

Depressing? Perhaps. The man behind the curtain we pretend we don’t know is there? Perhaps. But at the end of the day that’s what it is. It’s tie-in fiction. It’s not the steak or even the potatoes, but rather the lemon wedge.

 

The fact that we have the high notes that we do at all is actually rather impressive when you think about it. Because again, the core product, the core narrative, is the models themselves. Everything else is supplemental/ancillary.

 

Compare to other franchises, like the gold standard, Star Wars. The core product was a narrative. It was a work of fiction that told a story. And that story was more or less the work of a single author. Everything else in the marketing juggernaut that the franchise is ancillary. One could even say that the prequels and sequels to the original trilogy are themselves are ancillary products. And how does a company create ancillary products? It oursources them, often from disparate vendors. We bake our own bread, but we get the coleslaw from x.

 

Circle back to BL, and the very heart of the problem is that there isn’t one guy/gal sitting there with a story in mind. It’s outsourced to however many disparate content creators and such now. That right there is the cause of so much of the problem.

 

...but of course that is also what allows for some truly good stories to get through that might not otherwise (insert revered authors/books etc here).

 

Compare to the Tom Clancy-verse or the world of A Song of Ice and Fire or LOTR. Even if in there current forms there are authors (small “a”) creating content for them, there is still the Author (bog “a”) that has overarching authority and is responsible for the master story that ties it all together (even if The Author no longer actually exists).

 

...to me, that is what the setting of 40k most sorely lacks. That Author to pull everything together in such a way that—love or hate it—there’s a master plan involved. I am still reserving final judgement for the SoT series to see if it does come together at least internally to the SoT series itself, although so far 3 books in it it doesn’t quite feel that way.

 

I am part hoping/part guessing that whatever the next big series is that they pick an Author to write the Story for it, and then a group of other authors actually write the stories that pull it off. For the sake of argument, we’ll say they pull names out of a hat and Chris Wraight gets to write The Scouring, but then ADB, Abnetr, McNeill, Swallow, Haley, Thorpe, French, etc... all get to write stories within that framework that directly support Wraight’s overarching vision.

 

Anyways, my point is that BL wants product pushed out as fast as possible. Maybe for the money and maybe because as a present-day business they feel the only way they can exist in a world of “Liked Breaking Bad? Netflix suggests you watch Narcos...” is quantity over quality. For that reason they outsource to many different writers to crank stuff out simoultaneously (relatively). The alternative would be, to use the Scouring example above, to have Wraight take the time to write the master Story, disseminate to others, get their questions answered, and then review the content each creates in addition to the normal editors.

 

... BL does not seem to have the stomach for that, so instead we have the duct tape of “nothing is canon” and the chewing gum of “everything is canon.”

 

TL;DR: what’s the real power of the Schwartz?

Edited April 4, 2020 by Indefragable

[bluntblade]

So if the siege of terra series ends with horus killing the emperor and winning the heresy, is it toxic to have expected it to go the other way? Or should we just accept it because the official line is "everything is canon" .

Well, no. By Xisor's own analysis, that would break immersion for almost anyone.

 

The point is more that, for example, people fixate on the "what" of Abaddon killing Sigismund and whether that breaks from the lore, rather than the emotion of everything around it. Even when the author actually cuts away from the fight because we know how it has to end.

 

You get a lot less out of, say, Path of Heaven if you only take the factoids that there was a backup Throne, that only one Primarch could fill it, that the Paternova of the Navigators opposed the Webway Program and that the Emperor's Children had begun to experiment with demonic summonings at this stage of the Heresy. The book adds to the canon, but more importantly it adds to the story of the Heresy and its characters, rather than just moving the plot forward.

Edited April 4, 2020 by bluntblade

[mc warhammer]

 

The fact that we have the high notes that we do at all is actually rather impressive when you think about it. Because again, the core product, the core narrative, is the models themselves. Everything else is supplemental/ancillary.

 

 

also mate, not to forget that even the same author can and will contradict or retcon themselves (tolkein, martin etc)

 

i think when you put it the way you have, 40k does acquit itself impressively. it might be fairer to compare it to universes based on games like dragonlance and forgotten realms or even toy universes like masters of the universe and transformers than say star wars or star trek.

 

may the schwartz be with you

[b1soul]

I hold that 40K can be whatever you want it to be. There is no "right" or "proper" way of consuming 40K tie-in fiction.

 

Some ways of consumption lead to deeper philosophical or intellectual discussion. You can certainly aspire to be the Samuel Johnson of 40K literature.

 

But if you just really like the Imperial Fists, and enjoy rooting for them at the Siege, like you would root for your favourite team playing in the Premier League finals (i.e. treating the SoT series more like an event than a body of literary work)...who is anyone to take away from your enjoyment or tell you that you're being a dumb pleb who doesn't know how to properly consume?

[Marshal Rohr]

The problem with ‘canon’ or ‘non-canon’ and toxicity is the toxicity is independent of the universe. It doesn’t matter what the subject is, because humans will still fight over it. The word canon itself is ecclesiastical in nature, and all of modern western society is shaped around the Treaty of Westphalia were two subgroups arguing over ‘canon’ and it’s interpretations decided to part ways. It’s not a particularly modern phenomenon. I bet if you went back thousands of years you’d have people arguing over different retelling of the Illiad, which itself was a retelling or two Egyptians arguing over what God did what.

[SkimaskMohawk]

 

So if the siege of terra series ends with horus killing the emperor and winning the heresy, is it toxic to have expected it to go the other way? Or should we just accept it because the official line is "everything is canon" .

Well, no. By Xisor's own analysis, that would break immersion for almost anyone.

 

The point is more that, for example, people fixate on the "what" of Abaddon killing Sigismund and whether that breaks from the lore, rather than the emotion of everything around it. Even when the author actually cuts away from the fight because we know how it has to end.

 

You get a lot less out of, say, Path of Heaven if you only take the factoids that there was a backup Throne, that only one Primarch could fill it, that the Paternova of the Navigators opposed the Webway Program and that the Emperor's Children had begun to experiment with demonic summonings at this stage of the Heresy. The book adds to the canon, but more importantly it adds to the story of the Heresy and its characters, rather than just moving the plot forward.

And yet we have some posters who just gave a blanket yes to toxic and sited unreliable narration as the reason for any and all discrepancies.

 

Also, the facts of a book drive the story. An example from the saturnine leaks

 

you have loken killing off the sons of horus high command. It can be the most symbolically fulfilling moment, thats thematically rich and is the perfect cap of lokens entire narrative. But falkus kibre dies. Is it toxic to say "that's wrong and shouldn't have happened and lessens the impact of the rest of loken's accomplishments because it's so jarringly incorrect" ?

[Phoebus]

I don’t understand why Gascoigne’s definition of canon for this setting causes consternation. I definitely don’t think that raising extreme hypotheticals is a valid criticism against it.

 

As he said, if something has the Warhammer 40K logo (among others) on it, it exists in that universe. It’s canon, full stop. That having been said, there are three decades’ worth of material in a setting that has evolved. Inconsistencies and contradictions between said material are inevitable, and the only way to eliminate them would be to say anything written before a certain date (or edition, or whatever) “no longer counts.” No one at Games Workshop is interested in doing that, however, and I don’t blame them. On a very basic, very human level, the material in question represents a labor of love of the people who run the company today, or a respected peer, or even a friend. And so, the inconsistencies and contradictions remain, and an explanation is given wherein they reflect the nature of the setting itself: they are the products of a decaying empire that corrupts and subverts the truth of events occurring thousands of years in the past.

 

Beyond that, there are obviously people in place whose job is to control what is added to the setting — and thus becomes canon — moving forward. They are the creative teams that write Black Library novels*, develop background material for codices and Forge World campaign books, and so on. They are the editors that screen these products prior to release, who we know (thanks to more than one author posting here or elsewhere) do their work with certain criteria in mind. They are the company officers who control the IP. So on, and so forth. These individuals and teams are responsible for ensuring that, e.g., authors no longer depict Space Marines doing backflips in Tactical Dreadnought Armour, and that focus items like Primaris Marines or Imperial Knights get the requisite attention in a given story.

 

Inevitably, mistakes are made** because human beings are imperfect. It’s fair to expect that Games Workshop, Black Library, etc., work to minimize them, and I think it’s fair to say people and processes are in place to do so. Being frustrated by something like Magnus’s delayed warning in The Outcast Dead is fair game. Arguing that Games Workshop’s stance means that nothing counts as canon, or that It could allow blatant contradictions of the setting’s core themes, though?

 

* We know from various interviews and fora that extended storylines like the Horus Heresy are not left to authors to develop in a vacuum, but that there is coordination to work within the framework of a directed narrative arc. There is obviously artistic freedom and room was afforded to incorporate pitches for stories that fleshed out the core elements, but it’s not like there was no author agency over the series as a whole.

 

** I think it needs to be said that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about something being a mistake. I haven’t read Saturnine yet, but ...

 

... given that at least one character In the thrall of Chaos has been resurrected in the Horus Heresy series, I’m not convinced that Falkus Kibre’s death was an editorial oversight.

Edited April 4, 2020 by Phoebus

[bluntblade]

The events of a book can drive the story, but the thing that's important is what they represent and that the characters retain some agency (unless the point is that they have none). LotR's plot is the Ring-Bearer's quest, but it's not about the quest and I will grab a link for this in a second.

 

Edit: the plot is the thing on which the story is built, but it's not the same thing. And even in a series like the HH which skews towards the literal, you also have allegory and metaphor which is in danger of getting lost if we just focus on the raw events. That can also lead to the unfortunate occurrence of overly plotty stories (for the kind of story they are, e.g. Hollywood blockbusters), and characters not driving a story and instead being put on rails by the plot.

Edited April 4, 2020 by bluntblade

[RandyB]

I suppose I'm railing against the fact that GW has the position that they do. That it would be called 'toxic' to suggest canon matters, just drives me a little nuts.

 

For RandyB to suggest its toxic clearly means some people are not getting it. I'm not here to win, simply to come to a common ground, that cannot exist if people say 'no canon'.

 

There was once, on the dark quiet place of Portent (perhaps it had become Warseer by then...) a timeline of 40K. A really really good by MvS if I remember correctly.

 

Thats the kind of stuff I'm here for, an actual understanding of a setting that I think is by now, wildly varied, unique, and interesting, but difficult to discuss if we simply allow people to believe what they want and pass it as fact.

 

EDIT: Perhaps it goes back to a post earlier.

 

Is your Framework, 'Canon' or is it Framework, something higher level, and "Canon" means more minute details?

 

Even by the scale you provided earlier, it all works until you get to fanon, which I dont think any of us seem to be disagreeing on.

 

I will clarify.

 

Yes, there is canon. Canon is under the sole authority of GW and those to whom they assign the task of writing lore; in game books, Black Library, wherever.

 

What is toxic is when fans insist that their interpretations of that canon are inviolate, and condemn anything - and anyone - that violates their interpretations. Especially when it comes to, for example, nitpicking the wording used by one author vs. another. 

 

"Unreliable narrator" is certainly not a blanket license to assert ones own headcanon against GW's established canon. It is especially not a license to denigrate another player's creativity in building and painting a rules-legal army for play. It is the reconciliation of all those details in GW-published lore that become the focus of the toxicity.

[Xisor]

"You keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means."

 

Consider terms related to canon: non-canonical, apocrypha and heresy.

 

As far as GW is concerned, there is no canon.

 

But there is IP. There is the brand. There's a body of published work and reference material.

 

That's what is afoot here.

 

So a not entirely unrecent event is perfect for examining: are the events of Umbra Sumus canon?

[Donkey Kong]

The single biggest problem with BL—and the HH and SoT series are microcosms of this—is that there is no author. There is no definitive authorial voice. You’d think that would be like...the author....but it’s not. It’s not even the editor(s). It’s the company. Which is is a model company first and foremost. The entirety of BL’s catalogue is a glorified Saturday morning cartoon made to sell more toys.

 

Depressing? Perhaps. The man behind the curtain we pretend we don’t know is there? Perhaps. But at the end of the day that’s what it is. It’s tie-in fiction. It’s not the steak or even the potatoes, but rather the lemon wedge.

 

Very well said.

 

While I understand what you're saying the idea that a band of Night Lords did not wreck some havoc on some Astropaths, and have a run in with some Eldar, is absurd.

 

To suggest any of the founding 'truth' of the setting may or may not be true once there is an actual novel that details the events, makes a mockery of the setting.

 

'Nah Lorgar was never with Angron, Angron just woke up a Daemon Prince'. It's idiotic.

 

Again, I don't blame you, but it's a cop out.

 

If canon doesn't exist, this portion of the forum is worthless..

 

For them to even suggest as such is lazy.

 

For tie-in fiction, you need consistency.

You need relevance to the wider setting.

 

You need a grounding, in which book A plays by the same rules as book B.

 

There is canon in 40K.

 

Dante lead's the Blood Angels.

 

What is the point of these little quips? They prove the point. As conflicting, contradictory, or outright wrong some entries in the assembled construct that is 40K is, there are facts of the setting.

 

To say 'well those could be changed on a whim' is true, but it is also not relevant. There are 4 primary Chaos Gods. Thats fact. That's unchanged. Thats 25 years of histoy, reinforcement, and lore.

 

For whatever it's worth, in a vacuum I agree with you. But, we're not in a vacuum, and we're not dealing with a property that has a singular creative vision from a singular author like A Song of Ice and Fire. There is no 40k equivalent to "here are all the reasons why I think Jaime Lannister is Azor Ahai." 40k is about facilitating your ability to create. If you think you've got a worthwhile story to tell, then tell it. Worst case scenario, it gets ignored. I got into the B&C through the Liber Astartes. We have an entire subform now dedicated to "Special Projects" in the Frater Domus.

 

Your factoids aren't proving a point though, they're names without meaning. "Dante lead's the Blood Angles." What are the Blood Angels? Extrapolate from there. What's a Space Marine Legion? A Chapter? Don't you think a thousand Space Marines is a small number? What's a Space Marine, anyway? At what point do our interpretations disconnect? Dawn of War and Ultramarines and Astartes are all supposedly representing the same thing, but there are enough differences that it's worth asking which of these best represents what you think of when you think of a Space Marine? Is the Retributor in Astartes really the same thing as the Blood Raven in Dawn of War?

Who is Dante? Is Dante just a suit of golden power armor with an axe and a pistol? Or does he have a personality too? It's fun putting The Avengers together and watching well developed characters interact and bounce off one another. Maybe it's my ignorance and I'm missing out on some great stories, but I don't know what Dante's character is like and I genuinely can't say I have any idea what would happen if you put Dante, Calgar, and Shrike in a room together.

 

Most of the posters who have said anything about it like ADB's Night Lords trilogy. I'm finishing up part 2 and I think it's been pretty good, but there are things that don't line up particularly well. I think at one point in the first book it's mentioned that the Exalted's warband has been fighting for a century or so. Time works weird in the Warp, so that should be justifiable, I guess. But, in book 2 which starts at most, a couple months after book 2, we're introduced to the Red Corsairs and we're told that they've been active for a few centuries. The Badab War is dated 901-912.M41 per Imperial Armour Volume , so does that mean that Blood Reaver is happening a good couple centuries into M42? Does that mean that Talos has only experienced one or two hundred years when in "real time" it's been over. ten thousand? I have a conundrum, what am I supposed to do?

 

I don't think that there's anything wrong with appreciating something for what it is, praising the things you like, pointing out the things you don't, and then having a conversation from there. If there's a canon, you should be able to define it. But, I don't see anybody volunteering to take a swing at a comprehensive Warhammer 40,000 version of The Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels, and I can't blame them. 

 

I don’t understand why Gascoigne’s definition of canon for this setting causes consternation. I definitely don’t think that raising extreme hypotheticals is a valid criticism against it.

 

As he said, if something has the Warhammer 40K logo (among others) on it, it exists in that universe. It’s canon, full stop. That having been said, there are three decades’ worth of material in a setting that has evolved. Inconsistencies and contradictions between said material are inevitable, and the only way to eliminate them would be to say anything written before a certain date (or edition, or whatever) “no longer counts.” No one at Games Workshop is interested in doing that, however, and I don’t blame them. On a very basic, very human level, the material in question represents a labor of love of the people who run the company today, or a respected peer, or even a friend. And so, the inconsistencies and contradictions remain, and an explanation is given wherein they reflect the nature of the setting itself: they are the products of a decaying empire that corrupts and subverts the truth of events occurring thousands of years in the past.

 

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on Heretic Tomes, how it was introduced and then quietly dropped. It almost feels like a peek behind the curtain.

[BrainFireBob]

If it's a shared universe, or a series, this criticism is offbase.

 

Nothing wrong with a good WhatIf or Elseworlds story, but they don't claim on the tin to be something they're not.

 

If it's a series, structured as a series, billed as a series- authors are providing *installments* within a setting over which they do not have complete creative control.

 

If it's a shared universe, what ties it together are certain rules. Violate those rules, and it's a lie- alternate universe fanfic.

 

Stand alones without strong tie-ins within a setting? Go nuts within the broad shared universe rules.

 

Write a HH book where Sanguinius being taller than Roboute is plot determinant and critical, then have an author write a subsequent novel where it's plot determinant and critical the other way, you insult your audience- you cannot claim they are sequels. Whole reason content editors exist.

 

Or, there's a time and place, but if you paid me for a Mercedes, then I show up with a Volkswagon I attached a Mercedes hood ornament to, they're not the same thing.

Edited April 4, 2020 by BrainFireBob

[BrainFireBob]

As someone who's defended some controversial Disney films and still loves some of those films despite now hating his own love for those films, that's not really what we're talking about here. We're talking about an approach to media in which only the surface-level stuff is really discussed and the logical strength of a film is held up as more important than its emotional impact or metaphorical meaning.

 

To parahrase Dan Olsen of Folding Ideas, stories "need to function emotionally as well as logically." And this is where some BL stuff falls down, as it just shovels a load of lore at us and the result can be a story which means nothing.

The fundamental quality required for art to reach an audience is suspension of disbelief.

 

You can intend all kinds of emotional impact *that cannot happen if this basic threshold is not met*.

 

While most people accept some minor errors in continuity, flagrant and significant deviations- the Imperium but the Primarchs aren't superhuman, that's a lie to explain Space Marines! TWIST HORUS HERESY NOVEL- will not rise to that threshold, and therefore *fails*. This should be non-controversial, reading that line is part of the job for these writers.

Edited April 4, 2020 by BrainFireBob

[Phoebus]

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on Heretic Tomes, how it was introduced and then quietly dropped. It almost feels like a peek behind the curtain.

I think the quotes by Dunn and the official blurb from the then-website capture what I was trying to express above: the setting evolves, and as it does certain material no longer “accurately describes our fictional universe.” I proposed an extreme — deleting things prior to certain dates — but I had forgotten about Heretic Tomes, which at the time I thought was an elegant way of achieving the same end without pretending that something didn’t happen at all.

Edited April 4, 2020 by Phoebus

[Scribe]

 

Your factoids aren't proving a point though, they're names without meaning. "Dante lead's the Blood Angles." What are the Blood Angels? Extrapolate from there. What's a Space Marine Legion? A Chapter? Don't you think a thousand Space Marines is a small number? What's a Space Marine, anyway? At what point do our interpretations disconnect? Dawn of War and Ultramarines and Astartes are all supposedly representing the same thing, but there are enough differences that it's worth asking which of these best represents what you think of when you think of a Space Marine? Is the Retributor in Astartes really the same thing as the Blood Raven in Dawn of War?

Who is Dante? Is Dante just a suit of golden power armor with an axe and a pistol? Or does he have a personality too? It's fun putting The Avengers together and watching well developed characters interact and bounce off one another. Maybe it's my ignorance and I'm missing out on some great stories, but I don't know what Dante's character is like and I genuinely can't say I have any idea what would happen if you put Dante, Calgar, and Shrike in a room together.

 

 

What are the Blood Angels? There is canon for that.

What is a Space Marine Legion? There is canon for that.

Who is Dante? Well, there is a novel for that.

 

I dont understand what point you are making here. Those minor quips do say something. There are answers to your questions, and largely they are definitive and can be supported by decades of text.

[bluntblade]

 

As someone who's defended some controversial Disney films and still loves some of those films despite now hating his own love for those films, that's not really what we're talking about here. We're talking about an approach to media in which only the surface-level stuff is really discussed and the logical strength of a film is held up as more important than its emotional impact or metaphorical meaning.

 

To parahrase Dan Olsen of Folding Ideas, stories "need to function emotionally as well as logically." And this is where some BL stuff falls down, as it just shovels a load of lore at us and the result can be a story which means nothing.

The fundamental quality required for art to reach an audience is suspension of disbelief.

 

You can intend all kinds of emotional impact *that cannot happen if this basic threshold is not met*.

 

While most people accept some minor errors in continuity, flagrant and significant deviations- the Imperium but the Primarchs aren't superhuman, that's a lie to explain Space Marines! TWIST HORUS HERESY NOVEL- will not rise to that threshold, and therefore *fails*. This should be non-controversial, reading that line is part of the job for these writers.

 

Mate, I'm not arguing that suspension of disbelief isn't a thing. The latest controversial Disney movie overloaded my suspension of disbelief in the first half hour because, ironically enough, it felt like a constructed plot intended more to fill wiki pages than tell a story.

 

I feel like at least one side is being talked past here, maybe both.

[Donkey Kong]

 

 

Your factoids aren't proving a point though, they're names without meaning. "Dante lead's the Blood Angles." What are the Blood Angels? Extrapolate from there. What's a Space Marine Legion? A Chapter? Don't you think a thousand Space Marines is a small number? What's a Space Marine, anyway? At what point do our interpretations disconnect? Dawn of War and Ultramarines and Astartes are all supposedly representing the same thing, but there are enough differences that it's worth asking which of these best represents what you think of when you think of a Space Marine? Is the Retributor in Astartes really the same thing as the Blood Raven in Dawn of War?

Who is Dante? Is Dante just a suit of golden power armor with an axe and a pistol? Or does he have a personality too? It's fun putting The Avengers together and watching well developed characters interact and bounce off one another. Maybe it's my ignorance and I'm missing out on some great stories, but I don't know what Dante's character is like and I genuinely can't say I have any idea what would happen if you put Dante, Calgar, and Shrike in a room together.

 

 

What are the Blood Angels? There is canon for that.

What is a Space Marine Legion? There is canon for that.

Who is Dante? Well, there is a novel for that.

 

I dont understand what point you are making here. Those minor quips do say something. There are answers to your questions, and largely they are definitive and can be supported by decades of text.

 

 

You still haven't said anything. If there's a canon, then you can tell me what it is instead of vaguely pointing to nebulous sources and saying "there is a canon for that."

 

Is a space marine still a space marine if he's barely on equal footing with an ork boy? What if he's doing backflips in terminator armor and overpowering ork nobs? I remember reading that a space marine in the old Inquisitor game was supposedly so strong that he'd do more damage to an enemy by throwing a grenade at him than the grenade would do exploding. Is that hyperbole or an accurate representation of what a space marine should be?

 

Genuinely, what do you do when you encounter conflicting lore?

 

 

 

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on Heretic Tomes, how it was introduced and then quietly dropped. It almost feels like a peek behind the curtain.

I think the quotes by Dunn and the official blurb from the then-website capture what I was trying to express above: the setting evolves, and as it does certain material no longer “accurately describes our fictional universe.” I proposed an extreme — deleting things prior to certain dates — but I had forgotten about Heretic Tomes, which at the time I thought was an elegant way of achieving the same end without pretending that something didn’t happen at all.

 

Thanks for the reply. I thought you'd think it was interesting that at one point, Black Library attempted your proposed extreme, and then quietly walked it back. I'm almost more interested in finding out why they removed Heretic Tomes than why they brought it out in the first place.

[BrainFireBob]

 

 

 

As someone who's defended some controversial Disney films and still loves some of those films despite now hating his own love for those films, that's not really what we're talking about here. We're talking about an approach to media in which only the surface-level stuff is really discussed and the logical strength of a film is held up as more important than its emotional impact or metaphorical meaning.

 

To parahrase Dan Olsen of Folding Ideas, stories "need to function emotionally as well as logically." And this is where some BL stuff falls down, as it just shovels a load of lore at us and the result can be a story which means nothing.

The fundamental quality required for art to reach an audience is suspension of disbelief.

 

You can intend all kinds of emotional impact *that cannot happen if this basic threshold is not met*.

 

While most people accept some minor errors in continuity, flagrant and significant deviations- the Imperium but the Primarchs aren't superhuman, that's a lie to explain Space Marines! TWIST HORUS HERESY NOVEL- will not rise to that threshold, and therefore *fails*. This should be non-controversial, reading that line is part of the job for these writers.

Mate, I'm not arguing that suspension of disbelief isn't a thing. The latest controversial Disney movie overloaded my suspension of disbelief in the first half hour because, ironically enough, it felt like a constructed plot intended more to fill wiki pages than tell a story.

 

I feel like at least one side is being talked past here, maybe both.

It's a question of inclusivity.

 

If violating established rules breaks immersion for an individual, then the art has failed in its fundamental prior.

 

Your willingness to lay aside canon conflicts in the interest of a work of art is your personal threshold.

 

The free market determines which view prevails in terms of where the line is.

 

I rather think a lot of the kvetching is a mix of not admitting one is not the dominant market in terms of threshold, and authors raised in a deconstructionist tradition who can't handle the difference between treating what they're given with respect, adding their own voice and spin to a rich tradition, and throwing out what came before as trash.

 

Marvel is more successful than DC. DC is doing what you advocate for- Marvel is doing the canon style, under Feige's control. I enjoy some of the DC films quite a bit- but Marvel's bigger for a reason.

Edited April 4, 2020 by BrainFireBob

[Scribe]

 

 

 

Your factoids aren't proving a point though, they're names without meaning. "Dante lead's the Blood Angles." What are the Blood Angels? Extrapolate from there. What's a Space Marine Legion? A Chapter? Don't you think a thousand Space Marines is a small number? What's a Space Marine, anyway? At what point do our interpretations disconnect? Dawn of War and Ultramarines and Astartes are all supposedly representing the same thing, but there are enough differences that it's worth asking which of these best represents what you think of when you think of a Space Marine? Is the Retributor in Astartes really the same thing as the Blood Raven in Dawn of War?

Who is Dante? Is Dante just a suit of golden power armor with an axe and a pistol? Or does he have a personality too? It's fun putting The Avengers together and watching well developed characters interact and bounce off one another. Maybe it's my ignorance and I'm missing out on some great stories, but I don't know what Dante's character is like and I genuinely can't say I have any idea what would happen if you put Dante, Calgar, and Shrike in a room together.

 

 

What are the Blood Angels? There is canon for that.

What is a Space Marine Legion? There is canon for that.

Who is Dante? Well, there is a novel for that.

 

I dont understand what point you are making here. Those minor quips do say something. There are answers to your questions, and largely they are definitive and can be supported by decades of text.

 

 

You still haven't said anything. If there's a canon, then you can tell me what it is instead of vaguely pointing to nebulous sources and saying "there is a canon for that."

 

Is a space marine still a space marine if he's barely on equal footing with an ork boy? What if he's doing backflips in terminator armor and overpowering ork nobs? I remember reading that a space marine in the old Inquisitor game was supposedly so strong that he'd do more damage to an enemy by throwing a grenade at him than the grenade would do exploding. Is that hyperbole or an accurate representation of what a space marine should be?

 

Genuinely, what do you do when you encounter conflicting lore?

 

 

I'm...not interested enough in outlining what a Space Marine is, what a Legion is, what a Chapter is, and what the Blood Angels are, where they are from, why they value and create art, and who their leader is.

 

That the information is out there, is enough for me. I mean you are looking to get into area's of context (Marine vs Ork boy), and abstraction (Marine vs Ork Boy on the Table) that obviously introduce a disconnect. Anyone else got the White Dwarf with the Movie Marines list?

 

A Space Marine is a Male Human, elevated through gene/hormone/organ/hand waving manipulation, with psychological conditioning introduced at a young age, commonly prior to adulthood. The resulting transhuman is quicker thinking, stronger, faster, and larger than baseline humanity, and is equiped with some of the best technology available to the Imperium.

 

The Imperium is (many words).

 

The Space Marine Legions, were created (many words) and were broken down into chapters, following (many words) so that they would never threaten the Imperium again, and could better defend against the many threats to the Imperium following (many words).

 

One of those Chapters is the Blood Angels, who were formed from the contribution of genetic material from Sanguinius who (many words) ...

 

I mean do you understand what I'm saying here? You could QUITE LITERALLY go through decades of supporting text and outline the Framework (big F) that we have been discussing here for all of your questions.

 

That resource material, is canon. That is all I am saying.

 

--

 

As to what I do when I encounter lore that I find offensive like oh...a backflipping Terminator, or say...Nykona Sharrowkyn's as an entity at all?

 

I sigh and move on. What else can we do? It's entered into the lore, its part of the canon. It doesnt matter if I think a 500 lb 8 foot tall walking mini car climbing through the cables and rafters like a ninja is stupid. It's there, its part of the Heresy series now, what else can you do?

 

I'll never reference it, or even think about it, or build an army around flipping ninja marines that can shadow step (seriously McNeill golly gee [?? censoring double U, tee, eff, is excessive Mods/Admin's, come on] are you even doing between this and Outcast Dead...) but it is what it is.

Edited April 4, 2020 by Scribe

[Phoebus]

Thanks for the reply. I thought you'd think it was interesting that at one point, Black Library attempted your proposed extreme, and then quietly walked it back. I'm almost more interested in finding out why they removed Heretic Tomes than why they brought it out in the first place.

Supposition:

 

Just because something isn’t considered representative of the current setting doesn’t mean there isn’t interest in it. In that sense, I imagine Black Library — who were aware of said interest — decided to introduce the Heretic Tomes imprint to bolster their existing print-on-demand efforts. Along the same lines, I imagine said imprint was pulled when it ran out of legs.

[Donkey Kong]

That resource material, is canon. That is all I am saying.

 

--

 

As to what I do when I encounter lore that I find offensive like oh...a backflipping Terminator, or say...Nykona Sharrowkyn's as an entity at all?

 

I sigh and move on. What else can we do? It's entered into the lore, its part of the canon. It doesnt matter if I think a 500 lb 8 foot tall walking mini car climbing through the cables and rafters like a ninja is stupid. It's there, its part of the Heresy series now, what else can you do?

 

I'll never reference it, or even think about it, or build an army around flipping ninja marines that can shadow step (seriously McNeill golly gee are you even doing between this and Outcast Dead...) but it is what it is.

 

Doesn't picking and choosing, as you, and I, and presumably everyone else does, undercut what you're saying about the source material being canon then? Would you rather that the things that you didn't like were made irrefutable canon as a tradeoff for never having to have the "loose canon pick and choose" conversation again?

 

 

 

Thanks for the reply. I thought you'd think it was interesting that at one point, Black Library attempted your proposed extreme, and then quietly walked it back. I'm almost more interested in finding out why they removed Heretic Tomes than why they brought it out in the first place.

Supposition:

 

Just because something isn’t considered representative of the current setting doesn’t mean there isn’t interest in it. In that sense, I imagine Black Library — who were aware of said interest — decided to introduce the Heretic Tomes imprint to bolster their existing print-on-demand efforts. Along the same lines, I imagine said imprint was pulled when it ran out of legs.

 

If it's just about marketing, then yeah it's a simple answer. But, what are the lore implications? At some point, a conscious decision was made to say that Space Marine, Pawns of Chaos, and Farseer uniquely aren't canon and then it was rescinded. Are those books considered representative of the setting again? I guess Ockham's Razor, all things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one. Still, made me think.

[Scribe]

 

Doesn't picking and choosing, as you, and I, and presumably everyone else does, undercut what you're saying about the source material being canon then? Would you rather that the things that you didn't like were made irrefutable canon as a tradeoff for never having to have the "loose canon pick and choose" conversation again?

 

 

No, because I'm not picking and choosing what is canon. I'm saying even those things which are not internally consistent with the setting, that make no sense when stood up against the weight of literally decades of supporting text...even those things, once entered are canon, and are just waiting for a better author to make sense of it.

 

Its the 'Framework' vs 'Canon' vs 'Fanon or Headcanon' argument. In my Head Canon, that Shadow stepping sect of Ninja Marines doesnt exist, it is not internally consistent with the lore. If you hand wave it as some kind of Psyker Function, as some leveraging of the Warp. Well, then it makes sense. If you say its special super secret Heresy tech. Well, then it makes sense.

 

If you tell me he's just a super ninja marine using his secret ninjitsu skills learned innately due to being a Raven Guard super secret ninja? Pass. Hard pass.

 

That said its canon. It happened. I can hate it, and I can choose to not leverage it, but if someone wants to point to it and justify...whatever, then I have to accept that justification because its canon.

[Donkey Kong]

Its the 'Framework' vs 'Canon' vs 'Fanon or Headcanon' argument. In my Head Canon, that Shadow stepping sect of Ninja Marines doesnt exist, it is not internally consistent with the lore.

 

Sorry, the nuance is lost on me. Agree to disagree friend,  I'm not convincing you and you're not convincing me.

 

 

 

 

Bringing things back around to the OP, I think most of us in this thread disagree with the article posted. We do value canon and continuity and disagree that it's "toxic" to be passionate about them. The most significant difference is that 40k isn't the MCU or Star Wars and the way Games Workshop handles its lore has more in common with the SCP Foundation, Fallout, The Elder Scrolls C0DA, and Dark Souls than most properties. Funny enough, I had a couple videos pop up in my feed addressing the article that were significantly less kind than any response here. So, I figured I'd share one and two.

[Roomsky]

 

Its the 'Framework' vs 'Canon' vs 'Fanon or Headcanon' argument. In my Head Canon, that Shadow stepping sect of Ninja Marines doesnt exist, it is not internally consistent with the lore.

 

 Funny enough, I had a couple videos pop up in my feed addressing the article that were significantly less kind than any response here. So, I figured I'd share one and two.

 

 

Oh god. A response from Sargon.

 

It's with a supreme effort of will that I leave it at that.

 

I think the person writing the article's heart is in the right place and I think they've got some genuinely good critiques of circles that put too much stock in canon. I've agreed with most of Scribe's pro-canon arguments in this thread, and I still believe people have a habit of taking things too far. Acknowledging there's more to a story than how it advances continuity is not the same as trying to destroy it.

[DarkChaplain]

Smudboy AND Sargon, at that. Wowee. Now, I watched both, extensively, over the course of years, and neither of them have gone into a good direction over the past two years in particular. Unlike Roomsky, I do not have the will of steel to keep myself from commenting on the value of either personality's views.

 

Smudboy's critiques of games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution or Dragon Age were full of arguments I could get behind or that I found myself wondering as well when I played them, but his coverage of Star Wars in particular - as much as I may agree on some of his premises - was riven with ignorance. Funnily enough, ignorance of the SW Canon and the novels, comics etc, where many criticisms were already addressed. I unsubscribed way back when, as I could not take him seriously anymore and had to doubt his arguments being in good faith.

 

Sargon, meanwhile, has become the very thing he railed against in the beginning. His arguments have become increasingly unhinged (and they weren't all sound to begin with), with hypocrisy levels through the roof and strawmen all over the place. Heck, he's one of those people who popularized the whole "God Emperor Trump" meme, which has been annoying as all hell to see online.

At some point, he got simply too full of himself, believing himself correct by default, while putting up a veneer of scholarship. That's not to say that I necessarily disagree with his views or the conclusions he reaches, but the way he reaches them has become utterly distasteful and disingenuous to the point where I couldn't even watch him for comedic purposes anymore.

 

In summary, I consider both of them opportunist hacks that only got involved in the subject because the right/wrong sites or authors posted about it, and they want a piece of the pie. Fallacies and dishonesty aplenty, to the point where even if they were in support of my own views on the subject of canon, I wouldn't want them to represent my "side" of the spectrum. And my first thought upon seeing the article that initiated this thread was also a groan at Gawker and the usual buzzwords, mind you...

 

 

I still believe that canon in 40k is an important thing, especially for the hobby. You can, of course, make reductive arguments that it's all just written to sell toys, but that's not even necessarily true anymore, or hasn't been for ages outside of the final years of Kirby's time at the company's head. But even those toys they're selling are hugely reliant on the lore, the canon, of the entire setting. People aren't painting their dudes red just because they like the color, but because they might go faster that way they're Blood Angels, and they want to represent them with a high degree of authenticity on the tabletop. They want others to recognize their faction. Of course there are Hello Kitty armies and such, but those fully off the rockers armies are exceedingly rare, while most of the fans try to create something that fits their shared playground.

 

Dawn of War 1 managed to create a fandom for the Blood Ravens, and spawned many an army with conversions and what not at the time, or even rules conversations, since people wanted to represent them accurately. That same game had an army painter tool included to create custom chapters, but that alone didn't popularize anything else: People wanted Gabriel Angelos and co, as they had seen them in the campaign. And they didn't argue endlessly about the Blood Ravens being Thousand Sons successors out of toxicity, but to better anchor their faction in this shared universe, inspire them and learn more about them. Arguments may have been annoying, but I would not have considered them toxic or in bad faith. They're the result of a shared passion and desire to dive deeper into the hobby.

 

To make a personal argument on this matter: I love Lizardmen. WHFB Lizardmen. They got me into the hobby, and I still remember flipping through my first WD to find those blue-scaled reptile warriors in there. I wanted to learn more about them, read all I could at the time (which wasn't that much, considering outdated WDs were hard to come by, and my only net access was outside my own home) and collect that army more with every bit I learned. I was shattered when the End Times arrived and made them boot up their temples/now spaceships and bugger off into space. I was then again heartbroken when AoS rebooted them with near unrecognizable lore - canon - as light-daemons from outer space. Canon, in that way, hurt my desire to pursue the hobby tremendously, as it was developed / retconned in such a way that it did not resemble what I originally fell in love with. I think there's probably more than a few Necron fans who can say similar things about their faction.

 

The problem was, though, that even if I chose to play my Lizardmen as oldschool coldbloods, the canon of the game was different. At least until recently, when the writers thankfully reintroduced flesh and blood Lizards into the setting. Anybody I'd play with would have recognized my army as something I didn't want it to be. I could play WHFB or a spinoff, but that is dead and done with and wasn't going to get more updates or stories told (something fans of Bretonnia and the Tomb Kings got shafted on even harder, as their model lines were just shredded entirely). There's a reason why AoS was so heavily rejected during its first two years; the writing was mostly off the rails "anything goes" without much of an established canon beyond "these dudes with weird, trademarkable names exist and fight in places with more weird names". Incidentally, when it closed in on its second edition, which came with huge lore updates, and even maps, explanations of the metaphysics of the setting and so forth, establishing more civilizations and what not, it grew more successful than ever, to the point where even complete naysayers started considering it worthwhile. The whole "anything goes" attitude of making everything up on the fly, as needed, and filling stories with deus ex machinae all over? It didn't work. It needed established rules and frameworks to allow people to get invested in the setting. And since that canon got so heavily reinforced, the quality of novels in the range has also risen dramatically, all while fans are able to speculate on what's next, where campaign plots might go, or who unrevealed factions might be. Heck, yesterday's announcement of the Sons of Behemat giants was something the fandom was speculating on for a good while, even before GW's namedrop a few months back. A strong baseline canon can enable a much higher level of engagement and tie the community closer together on a shared stage.

 

That is to say, that canon, as it stands, has a huge impact on the setting, the fans, the stories that are possible to tell, the recognizability of your investments. It can both inspire people and turn them off forever, if their efforts so far just become invalidated, overwritten or ignored. They may all be plastic soldiers, but they exist in a fictional world that attempts to give them life, purpose and history. Changing that comes at a risk, but may also be rewarding if done well and with respect for its legacy and fans. I found that most people don't really care as much about changes being made as changes feeling authentic to what they were told before and how things were presented, whether they take into account previous versions and attempt to reconcile with them. Canon is a beautiful thing when the authors approach their subject matter with respect and an attempt at maintaining authenticity, since the fans generally try to be authentic as well.

 

 

....and yeah, these ramblings are brought to you with the help of my noisy neighbors again. Hope they're mildly coherent :')

Edited April 5, 2020 by DarkChaplain