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

[Brother Lunkhead]

I hope you're right Brother bluntblade..... I still hold out hope

[bluntblade]

I should stress in all of this that I like mythos. That should be clear from any of my AU project writings.

[BrainFireBob]

Because stories are primarily about the meaning and emotional resonance they carry

 

Which us idiosyncratic

 

There's no correct way to consume, for want of a better word, stories, and I don't like the pyramid of trueness which this very prescriptive approach to fandom can create.

 

Yet by putting a value judgment on it, you violate the "no correct way" clause.

But fiction is something very separate from that for me.

Bolded relevant bit

 

 

Edit: To be clear, if the balance of a community cares about X, then one vannot dictate the general community. One xan create subcomnunities. It's my whole moral issue with PC invading things like knitting.

Edited April 21, 2020 by BrainFireBob

[Tyriks]

 

Because stories are primarily about the meaning and emotional resonance they carry

Which us idiosyncratic

 

There's no correct way to consume, for want of a better word, stories, and I don't like the pyramid of trueness which this very prescriptive approach to fandom can create.

Yet by putting a value judgment on it, you violate the "no correct way" clause.

But fiction is something very separate from that for me.

Bolded relevant bit

 

 

Edit: To be clear, if the balance of a community cares about X, then one vannot dictate the general community. One xan create subcomnunities. It's my whole moral issue with PC invading things like knitting.

I truly am at a loss for what "PC invading things like knitting" is supposed to mean, here.  

[Brother Lunkhead]

=][= ..... and things were going so well. Consider this topic under review. =][=

[Kelborn]

=][=

 

I'm reopening this thread with a last and final remark.

 

Keep in mind, if this discussion is to continue:

- Stop picking on frater(s) posts and get on with the discussion.
- Stop indulging in analogies from other franchises or reallife and focus on 40K.

Picking on fraters' posts is rude and against the rules of this board/ community.

Indulging and getting lost in your favorite analogy is both "not clever" and off topic.

 

Return to the discussion and stick with it.

 

=][=

[Leif Bearclaw]

There are many criticisms of Black Library's canon(!) of published works, but one of the ones I'd heard most intriguingly wasn't of BL - but of Star Trek.

 

But it applies to Black Library.

 

We say (or at least I would!) that it's a vibrant, wonderful, intriguing, (horrifying!), grim dark world full of rich, strange, quirky details.

 

But how many songs are there? How often has anyone sung? What poetry is there within the Imperium? What operas and films and novels and stories - what of fundamentally human culture?

 

Sure, it might all be geared towards war, but that's grimdark war stories and grimdark war poetry and grimdark love songs. Grimdark teenage angst and grimdark complaints of old people. The Brothers Grimdark Fairytales.

 

Any number of cultural touchstones that we'd expect.

 

One of the common refrains I recall hearing in early Black Library Live things was the references to the "Nouns of the Space Marines" anthologies - I think it was referred to as "Recipes of the Space Marines".

 

Everybloodybody and their mother drinks amasec and recaf. (Thanks, Abnett!)

 

But how many details in the Black Library oeuvre have been that rich? There's huge swathes of Black Library that are utterly worthy of canon intrigue, but fundamentally the historical, procedural 'facts' of the setting - who was where, when - almost aren't that exciting. Or maybe aren't that exciting in a vacuum.

 

It hit a nerve with me when I heard it lain against Star Trek - that it's not that rich a setting, not in human detail like recipes. (DS9 notwithstanding - though I'd be surprised if that's not an unnoticed corollary to why DS9's so well liked.)

 

But when applied to 40k, it almost feels absurd! Why would there be recipes?

 

Well, for one, somebody's missing a trick by not insinuating that Space Marines submit on any number of special, approximatable-as-fan blends of protein shakes. Or how to make your own Skaven Warpstone cheese.

 

Or dwarf stonebread.

 

Or Drukharii soulblood pudding stones.

 

Whatever. I'm not that creative at that sort of thing. But it's a hell of a thing to get excited about, those little details.

 

But somehow that enthusiastic drive for canon as most readily discussed doesn't really get close to all that.

 

To end on an uplifting point, I would love it if Wraight (or to a less absolutely certain extent: any other author likely to be allowed to have a go!) actually wrote an in-universe novelisation My Wish to Generate Children with You is Only Exceeded by My Devotion to Him - a romance novel set on the paradise world of Krieg.

A forumite can dream.

I'm torn on this. On the one hand I can see why BL go with a reasonably homogenous culture, otherwise they'd have to realistically come up with something new for every one off throwaway world. Plus generic terms like amasec and recaf work for 'generic spirit' and 'hot drink containing mild stimulant', in the same way Germans use 'schnapps' to cover a wide variety of alcohols.

 

At the same time, it does remind me of a big reason I love the Cain books so much. They have proper 'civilian' moments (for want of a better term) and really make the world feel 'lived in', rather than a set for action scenes. Stuff like the nursery rhyme 'The Tracks on the Land Raider Crush the Heretics' or the children's colouring book about Promethium.

Edited April 25, 2020 by Kelborn

[Plasmablasts]

This topic reminds me of Tolkien’s complaint, in The Monsters and the Critics, of people given soup demanding to see the bones it was made from. The target of that essay was the tendency to use Beowulf as a load of ore from which to glean nuggets of facts about e.g. early Dark Ages warrior society: by no means an improper activity for an academic, but potentially “toxic” if becomes the criterion on which to judge Beowulf as a whole. Tolkien’s lament was that critical literature around Beowulf rarely touched Beowulf’s value as a story.

 

“Facts” are important in stories: they help create the illusion of the world of the story being “real”. When a “fact” appears to contradict previous “facts”, the dissonance risks jarring us from our immersion in the created world.

 

“Facts” are easy to discuss: they tend to be “correct” (in this context, congruent with precedent) or not. Other aspects of a story are harder to analyse and articulate. (Helping my sons with their maths homework is usually much easier than their English...). So, online discussions will often be weighted towards the “facts” in a story largely because that’s what the majority of people (I suspect) are comfortable articulating.

 

The “toxicity” comes when everything else the author might have achieved in the story is peremptorily set at nought due to an error, or perceived error, in the facts.

 

My recent experience was rewatching the “Battle of the Five Armies”. I’d really had mixed feelings about the Hobbit trilogy, due to the apparently cavalier disregard and re-writing of Tolkien’s timeline and geography (Legolas quickly nipping over to Gundabad from Esgaroth? How fast??). So, I’d never re-watched it, unlike the LotR trilogy which I’d seen several times. My boys wanted to watch it, so I watched it with them. While the discrepancies still jarred, this time I was able to enjoy the performances and visuals more, and accept it more on its own terms.

 

—-

 

As an aside, one specific difficulty 40k fiction has with the “facts” is that 40k does actually have a source of very objective data: the tabletop game. Except it’s widely acknowledged that the game statistics don’t match the “reality”. A bolter on the tabletop is not an awesome thing; a bolter in the lore is. The authors thus have to convey a bolter that is both an awe-inspiring holy symbol of the Emperor’s wrath and yet is congruent with the more “balanced” framework of the tabletop rules.

Edited April 26, 2020 by Plasmablasts

[Marshal Rohr]

That’s a great point, Plasmablasts. I think forum posting as a medium isn’t quite geared for talking about cool moments and scenes and 40k in particular suffers because so much of it is audience participation. For example, someone wants to build an army of a certain chapter and posts asking if they use a lot of X, and someone says they would have them because they’d have everything, and another person chimes in that in Y novel a character says they don’t have many X, and another person points out if you use X with the Chapter’s Z strategum you can have an super Death Star unit. People start correcting or arguing with the other posters about their points and the OP doesn’t really have any idea what the answer to his question was.

 

 

There’s novels I don’t like because they contradict themes and archetypes for my tabletop collections, but even in those novels there’s scenes and dialogue I really enjoy on their literary merit alone. So many people got up in arms about Master of Mankind to this day you see people on reddit saying it wasn’t a good book and while ‘good’ is a matter of personal taste, MoM was a great science fantasy novel and I think if someone from outside the fandom read it they’d enjoy it as much as I did.

 

 

This supports my theory 40K needs sourcebooks beyond codexes. Atlases, Cross-Sections, Artbooks that have nothing to do with battle scenes. Just a body of work people can use beyond internet communities to get a feel for the universes.

[Volt]

But I don't think anyone's advocating a book where Horus and the Emperor don't duel. We're concerned, as is the guy in the original article, that fans demanding nothing but canon (a friend once argued that Age of Ultron's "advert" sections like Thor's lightning bath should really have been short films instead, while Star Wars wouldn't be any worse off had Solo been a Wookiepedia article) could be harming storytelling in popular media.

The problem is less what the fans demand, more that the authors basically go nuts and trample the original thematic arc of the old story in the first place. I want the original William King Heresy, not because of some ebic fight scenes or nonsense (I actually disdain violence when not used for tension, but for its own sake in most circumstances) - but because the heresy we got is nothing like the classical literature styled Heresy that was originally written about. To me, the problem is a lack of structure and control, not too much of it. Freedom for many authors to run rampant basically guarantees anything will turn to crap by virtue of there being too many cooks. Any creative effort should be limited in authorship for the sake of coherency of its thematic arc. The HH we got isn't much of an arc, but an epileptic roller coaster ridden into absurdity.

[Xisor]

 

 

But I don't think anyone's advocating a book where Horus and the Emperor don't duel. We're concerned, as is the guy in the original article, that fans demanding nothing but canon (a friend once argued that Age of Ultron's "advert" sections like Thor's lightning bath should really have been short films instead, while Star Wars wouldn't be any worse off had Solo been a Wookiepedia article) could be harming storytelling in popular media.

The problem is less what the fans demand, more that the authors basically go nuts and trample the original thematic arc of the old story in the first place. I want the original William King Heresy, not because of some ebic fight scenes or nonsense (I actually disdain violence when not used for tension, but for its own sake in most circumstances) - but because the heresy we got is nothing like the classical literature styled Heresy that was originally written about. To me, the problem is a lack of structure and control, not too much of it. Freedom for many authors to run rampant basically guarantees anything will turn to crap by virtue of there being too many cooks. Any creative effort should be limited in authorship for the sake of coherency of its thematic arc. The HH we got isn't much of an arc, but an epileptic roller coaster ridden into absurdity.

---

 

Similarly, I don't understand how you arrived at King as classical literature. I love the man's stories, but quite a severe amount of his chapters start with the characters start with details of heir hangovers.

 

Classic literature it isn't. (And thank goodness, it's better for being its own thing. We got the literal classics in Deathfire, and I'm not convinced that was a boon to the Heresy.)

Edited April 26, 2020 by Brother Lunkhead

[Volt]

 

 

But I don't think anyone's advocating a book where Horus and the Emperor don't duel. We're concerned, as is the guy in the original article, that fans demanding nothing but canon (a friend once argued that Age of Ultron's "advert" sections like Thor's lightning bath should really have been short films instead, while Star Wars wouldn't be any worse off had Solo been a Wookiepedia article) could be harming storytelling in popular media.

The problem is less what the fans demand, more that the authors basically go nuts and trample the original thematic arc of the old story in the first place. I want the original William King Heresy, not because of some ebic fight scenes or nonsense (I actually disdain violence when not used for tension, but for its own sake in most circumstances) - but because the heresy we got is nothing like the classical literature styled Heresy that was originally written about. To me, the problem is a lack of structure and control, not too much of it. Freedom for many authors to run rampant basically guarantees anything will turn to crap by virtue of there being too many cooks. Any creative effort should be limited in authorship for the sake of coherency of its thematic arc. The HH we got isn't much of an arc, but an epileptic roller coaster ridden into absurdity.

---

 

Similarly, I don't understand how you arrived at King as classical literature. I love the man's stories, but quite a severe amount of his chapters start with the characters start with details of heir hangovers.

 

Classic literature it isn't. (And thank goodness, it's better for being its own thing. We got the literal classics in Deathfire, and I'm not convinced that was a boon to the Heresy.)

I meant in the thematic arc. The classic Horus Heresy by King and Merrett is essentially a blow-by-blow Greek tragedy, wherein the Emperor is an enlightened despot who aims to unite humanity under his armies and reclaim past glory, and to this end creates 20 sons which he deeply cares for, truly in fact. These sons are scattered across the galaxy by Chaos, spurring the Emperor to create the space marine legions to reclaim the Primarchs. One by one he finds them, starting with Horus who he dotes upon as his son. Eventually they are all collected, a little worse for wear, but the Emperor leads them into the early part of the crusade until he must depart, naming Horus Warmaster. This admittedly is the weakest part, but due to growing concerns and separation form the Emperor, Horus eventually falls to Chaos and begins to turn the rest of his brothers against the Emperor. The Heresy lasts for a short time, consisting of a small but brutal collection of battles that bleeds the Imperium heavily. Eventually we get to the Battle of Terra, where the Emperor is unable to bring himself to slay Horus, for he truly loves his son. Even with the death of Sanguinius the Emperor cannot bring himself to see his son as lost, until Horus casually slaps aside and kills a marine/guardsmen out of sheer contempt. The Emperor realizes Horus is lost, and in battle totally destroys his most beloved child while sustaining serious wounds that entomb him. The Emperor is damned by his hubris and love for his children, and the Imperium tumbles into despair in the wake of destruction that annihilates all hope for humanity's glorious resurrection.

 

Sure it was a basic framework, but with fleshing out by a concise and competent series, it could have been some pretty high grade literature despite coming from humble consumerist-aimed franchise roots. Instead we get an Emperor who catapults between cold indifference with his humanity dead to a somewhat human figure but is still bizarrely emotionally stunted, Primarchs whose emotional characterization changes on a coinflip, constant slapfights that contribute nothing to the actual plot, and a whole lot of jumbled thematic messages that get very confused between the numerous authors.

Edited April 26, 2020 by Brother Lunkhead

[bluntblade]

I do think that there are some valid criticisms there, though I think some things like the Emperor's interpreted personality simply needed to be approached with an open mind and allowed to bed down (the author himself in that case thinks the depiction was somewhat flawed and wishes he'd included the usual dynamic between the Emperor and Dorn in that instance) and bed down with future stories.

 

At least we haven't seen a book do the opposite and uproot that addition, I suppose, and I think what we saw of the Emperor in Solar War also helped reinforce the mercurial nature of how the big man is perceived.

[Brother Lunkhead]

=][= I've edited out several one line criticisms of other fraters' posts. This behavior is not helpful and contrary to the directives of the most recently issued Mod warning.

 

We are so very close to ending this topic. BE CAREFUL. =][=

[Donkey Kong]

Because stories are primarily about the meaning and emotional resonance they carry rather than the sum of their events.

 

I fundamentally disagree. A story is a vehicle to convey information. That information may have an intended purpose, it can teach, or entertain, or whatever. I've been entertained by plenty of stories set in this universe. The most recent emotional reaction I can remember having to a 40k story is in The Anarch when

 

Sabbat tells Gaunt that Milo got sucked into a vortex and presumably died the day before.

 

And even then I'd describe my feelings as annoyed with being deprived of what I imagined was going to be a heartwarming reunion (and one that I expected from the previous book to boot). And then a chapter or so later, the character gets reintroduced anyway, which I guess makes the whole thing a well executed tease? Regardless, I don't understand what "meaning and emotional resonance" mean. Especially in the context of 40k where, quite frankly, I think the universe is shallow.

 

 

 

 

There’s novels I don’t like because they contradict themes and archetypes for my tabletop collections, but even in those novels there’s scenes and dialogue I really enjoy on their literary merit alone. So many people got up in arms about Master of Mankind to this day you see people on reddit saying it wasn’t a good book and while ‘good’ is a matter of personal taste, MoM was a great science fantasy novel and I think if someone from outside the fandom read it they’d enjoy it as much as I did.

 

 

This supports my theory 40K needs sourcebooks beyond codexes. Atlases, Cross-Sections, Artbooks that have nothing to do with battle scenes. Just a body of work people can use beyond internet communities to get a feel for the universes.

 

Emphasis mine. What does that even mean? I don't know what reddit's hivemind opinion of MoM is, and I remember mostly liking the book between the set pieces, the battles, the dialogue, and so on. But, the underlying logic, the fundamental story, the entire five year war in the webway, is illogical and I think that that makes it a bad narrative decision. So, genuine high praise for ADB, I think he wrote an entertaining book in spite of its terrible premise. But, what's your argument beyond "Even the things that I don't like have elements that I can enjoy"? which, for the record, I agree  with.

 

I'd also be interested in a big, official collection of 40k art. But, what, pray tell, would be the difference between that hypothetical sourcebook and a wiki gallery or a deviantart collection? They'd all be equally canonical.

 

 

 

 

 

Edit: To be clear, if the balance of a community cares about X, then one vannot dictate the general community. One xan create subcomnunities. It's my whole moral issue with PC invading things like knitting.

I truly am at a loss for what "PC invading things like knitting" is supposed to mean, here.  

 

I believe BrainFireBob is referring to Ravelry's 2019 policy. And while none of us may be particularly invested in knitting, Ravelry is probably the largest online knitting community which makes their decision significant for that community. How it pertains to us as a gaming community, Ravelry's policy is based on an RPG.net policy. Other posters in this thread have brought up "comicsgate." And this is a pattern that has been observed in gaming (both digital and analog), science fiction and fantasy novels, comics, movies, metal music, and so on. If I'm interpreting BrainFireBob's "moral issue" correctly, he's saying that he would rather that these exclusionary voices made subcommunities of their own to police instead of working to police a community as a whole, which I largely agree with.

 

Mods, if answering Nemesor Tyriks's question is inappropriate, I'd recommend deleting my answer here as well as the pertinent text in the quoted posts.

[BrainFireBob]

 

 

Because stories are primarily about the meaning and emotional resonance they carry rather than the sum of their events.

I fundamentally disagree. A story is a vehicle to convey information. That information may have an intended purpose, it can teach, or entertain, or whatever. I've been entertained by plenty of stories set in this universe. The most recent emotional reaction I can remember having to a 40k story is in The Anarch when

 

Sabbat tells Gaunt that Milo got sucked into a vortex and presumably died the day before.

 

And even then I'd describe my feelings as annoyed with being deprived of what I imagined was going to be a heartwarming reunion (and one that I expected from the previous book to boot). And then a chapter or so later, the character gets reintroduced anyway, which I guess makes the whole thing a well executed tease? Regardless, I don't understand what "meaning and emotional resonance" mean. Especially in the context of 40k where, quite frankly, I think the universe is shallow.

 

 

 

There’s novels I don’t like because they contradict themes and archetypes for my tabletop collections, but even in those novels there’s scenes and dialogue I really enjoy on their literary merit alone. So many people got up in arms about Master of Mankind to this day you see people on reddit saying it wasn’t a good book and while ‘good’ is a matter of personal taste, MoM was a great science fantasy novel and I think if someone from outside the fandom read it they’d enjoy it as much as I did.

 

 

This supports my theory 40K needs sourcebooks beyond codexes. Atlases, Cross-Sections, Artbooks that have nothing to do with battle scenes. Just a body of work people can use beyond internet communities to get a feel for the universes.

Emphasis mine. What does that even mean? I don't know what reddit's hivemind opinion of MoM is, and I remember mostly liking the book between the set pieces, the battles, the dialogue, and so on. But, the underlying logic, the fundamental story, the entire five year war in the webway, is illogical and I think that that makes it a bad narrative decision. So, genuine high praise for ADB, I think he wrote an entertaining book in spite of its terrible premise. But, what's your argument beyond "Even the things that I don't like have elements that I can enjoy"? which, for the record, I agree with.

 

I'd also be interested in a big, official collection of 40k art. But, what, pray tell, would be the difference between that hypothetical sourcebook and a wiki gallery or a deviantart collection? They'd all be equally canonical.

 

 

 

 

 

Edit: To be clear, if the balance of a community cares about X, then one vannot dictate the general community. One xan create subcomnunities. It's my whole moral issue with PC invading things like knitting.

I truly am at a loss for what "PC invading things like knitting" is supposed to mean, here.

I believe BrainFireBob is referring to Ravelry's 2019 policy. And while none of us may be particularly invested in knitting, Ravelry is probably the largest online knitting community which makes their decision significant for that community. How it pertains to us as a gaming community, Ravelry's policy is based on an RPG.net policy. Other posters in this thread have brought up "comicsgate." And this is a pattern that has been observed in gaming (both digital and analog), science fiction and fantasy novels, comics, movies, metal music, and so on. If I'm interpreting BrainFireBob's "moral issue" correctly, he's saying that he would rather that these exclusionary voices made subcommunities of their own to police instead of working to police a community as a whole, which I largely agree with.

 

Mods, if answering Nemesor Tyriks's question is inappropriate, I'd recommend deleting my answer here as well as the pertinent text in the quoted posts.

Quite. Didn't want to get tangential, thought it better-known.

 

As the mods have noted, this forum is for 40k. We shouldn't try to make something it isn't via "wrongfun" accusations, which this topic inherently flies close to by framing.

Edited April 26, 2020 by BrainFireBob

[bluntblade]

I mean, it's hard to get into talking about the emotional stuff without it being rather woolly. But there are different kinds of information in stories, and in that case I was referring more to background details or the very dry stuff that can fill a wiki article but be dull on the page, as opposed to the information which tells you who a character is and makes you care for them.

 

Trying to put this elegantly, it comes down to which information is prioritised and what it's used for. I've seen books and films alike where a mechanical plot supersedes the actual story and while a lot happens, ultimately the text has nothing to say except "this happened." Admittedly BL examples aren't springing readily to mind for me right now, but I'm prepared to bet there are some stories which do nothing but fill out the infobox on a character, while another story actually gets into what they're about (Solar War with Abaddon does leap into my head there).

Edited April 26, 2020 by bluntblade

[Fedor]

Aren't sites like that Ravelry and RPG.net private? What does them taking a political stance have to do with this discussion? This :cuss is getting too hard to follow for someone with english as a second language.

[Rob P]

Marshal Rohr, on 26 Apr 2020 - 11:48 AM, said:http://bolterandchainsword.com//public/style_images/carbon_red/snapback.png

There’s novels I don’t like because they contradict themes and archetypes for my tabletop collections, but even in those novels there’s scenes and dialogue I really enjoy on their literary merit alone. So many people got up in arms about Master of Mankind to this day you see people on reddit saying it wasn’t a good book and while ‘good’ is a matter of personal taste, MoM was a great science fantasy novel and I think if someone from outside the fandom read it they’d enjoy it as much as I did.

 

-------------------

It really is a matter of taste.

 

Three of the 'information from wikipedia' plot points in the novel were

the nature of the emperor, Arkhan Land, and the stuff to do with Abaddon's sword

.

 

I agree the characters and dialogue are well formed - as is the way with ADB.

 

I respectfully disagree about the overall greatness of the book. I feel it is strongly let down by the plot arc - detrimentally,

 

I'm not convinced that this is a potential fandom toxicity issue either way. At best it's expectation over what was delivered.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Rob P

[Marshal Rohr]

Normally, when people don’t like a book, they put it down. They don’t write 1d4chan articles about the author having daddy issues and not understanding the universe they’ve been instrumental in building. It reminds me of the tweet (which was probably satire) of someone asking Stephen King if he’d read his own novel.

[Volt]

Normally, when people don’t like a book, they put it down. They don’t write 1d4chan articles about the author having daddy issues and not understanding the universe they’ve been instrumental in building. It reminds me of the tweet (which was probably satire) of someone asking Stephen King if he’d read his own novel.

To be entirely fair, that's a fair question to ask Steven King, it's not like he's entirely lucid while writing.

[bluntblade]

I feel like the MoM reaction is a great illustration of the List of Demands problem.

[Rob P]

Normally, when people don’t like a book, they put it down. They don’t write 1d4chan articles about the author having daddy issues and not understanding the universe they’ve been instrumental in building. It reminds me of the tweet (which was probably satire) of someone asking Stephen King if he’d read his own novel.

I've not seen that specifically, but I have seen that most 1d4chan 40k 'wikis' are sarcastic and full of opinions on intent - I didn't personally realise there was an underlying seriousness to anything on there.

 

I have seen 1 or 2 authors recently accused of putting on the page the agenda of the 'PC brigade'.

 

And to that I say 'the author is dead'  

[Marshal Rohr]

For a good example of the toxicity that gets throw at authors of you go through ADBs reddit posts the last thing he posted basically ended with him throwing up his hands in the face of posters taking personal shots at him

[bluntblade]

For a good example of the toxicity that gets throw at authors of you go through ADBs reddit posts the last thing he posted basically ended with him throwing up his hands in the face of posters taking personal shots at him

I'm sort of curious, but I also suspect it would be very demoralising.