Fandom and writing

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

49 minutes ago, acrozatarim said:

If I had to take a guess - and I legitimately don't have any actual facts here, as I don't know that many other BL authors personally as yet, but I do have somewhat related experience from my work in the ttrpg industry -  I'd imagine that plenty of folks may have retreated their online footprint in forums etc because, well, have you seen the internet lately? It's tiring, and for a creative, there comes a point where you look at how the scales balance when it comes spending energy on dealing with people online vs getting on with your work, and decide you need to focus on the latter.

 

And we did have a handful of absolute crusty neckbeards (who are no longer here thank the emperor but too little too late) always arguing with ADB on here. It stretched one's patience to read those threads couldnt imagine actually responding 

[Petitioner's City]

2 hours ago, acrozatarim said:

If I had to take a guess - and I legitimately don't have any actual facts here, as I don't know that many other BL authors personally as yet, but I do have somewhat related experience from my work in the ttrpg industry -  I'd imagine that plenty of folks may have retreated their online footprint in forums etc because, well, have you seen the internet lately? It's tiring, and for a creative, there comes a point where you look at how the scales balance when it comes spending energy on dealing with people online vs getting on with your work, and decide you need to focus on the latter.

 

Thank you for sharing.

 

I think this is one of the things that perhaps makes the lit forums on Trekbbs special - it has resisted becoming an "unsafe" space for writers. Among the writers past and presently active who post there are:

 

- Chris Bennett 

- David Mack

- Keith RA Decandido

- Greg Cox

- John Jackson Millar

- Dayton Ward

- James Swallow

- Una McCormack

- and others! 

 

Despite the general toxicity of fan culture online, the treklit forum has remained til today a welcoming place, one where yes people can be critical but it's a good space where creatives congregate with fans well. (Only one author, David R George, left it due to strong criticism following one book a decade ago, which was fair for him to do of course.)

 

I have always struggled that B&C, possibly with the biggest forum for the BL on the web, couldn't be a setting as open to casual author and editor participation as TrekBBS was (and remains). Of course ADB was here, we were lucky for a time in that regard and I fondly remember then, but he's not the only BL big writer who forums or is active on other social media - yet I'm not sure our forum would be a positive place for many of those figures?

[Rain]

I don’t know, toxicity is one of those buzzwords that’s kind of lost all meaning from overuse. Actual threats, slurs, and the like are pretty rare unless you go to sites that are pretty much nothing *but* that, but if you do, you know what you’re getting.

 

I remember when ADB was on here, and I was one of the crusty neckbeards that would sometimes engage with him (I really disliked the Sevatar character, though I loved the NL trilogy) and he seemed to take it in stride. It was clear that he was a fan that geeked out on this stuff besides being a talented writer.

 

The worst behavior I’ve seen at B&C (besides one twice banned poster) has been in Primaris vs FB threads, and even that is just passive aggression for the most part. Not exactly earth shattering.

[phandaal]

49 minutes ago, Rain said:

The worst behavior I’ve seen at B&C (besides one twice banned poster) has been in Primaris vs FB threads, and even that is just passive aggression for the most part. Not exactly earth shattering.

 

Soon to be three times banned, no doubt. 

 

And yes, this forum is one of the tamest places on the Internet. I do not say that as a bad thing either. The moderators do a great job keeping this forum from becoming a cesspool like some other fan sites. Even "heated" arguments here are nothing compared to the chimpanzee fury that people unleash on each other elsewhere on the world wide web.

[RWJP]

18 hours ago, Mechanicus Tech-Support said:

 

And we did have a handful of absolute crusty neckbeards (who are no longer here thank the emperor but too little too late) always arguing with ADB on here. It stretched one's patience to read those threads couldnt imagine actually responding 

I can confirm that these people are absolutely still out there. Just in the last few days one such specimen was arguing with Graham McNeill about Imperial Fists and Iron Warriors and what McNeill has written. 

Can't say I am surprised that authors tend to avoid most interactions with the public.

 

[wecanhaveallthree]

It is my constant and unceasing dream to one day attract enough authorial attention to have someone willing to argue with me about something I wrote. That's how you know you've made it, guys.

 

On the 'who would you have a brew with', I'd love to literally peel open McNeill's skull and plunder his brains, Galatea-style. How the man had the giant swinging stones to write what and how he did in the early Horus Heresy, I don't know, but I absolutely love him for it.

[Abanshee]

On 9/29/2023 at 6:44 AM, theSpirea said:

Josh Reynolds wasn't a big fan of 40K, especially Chaos SM. Yet his CSM novels are brilliant.

 

Sounds like me when I write anything relating to Iron Hands. I hate writing them with a passion, but I must admit I tend to write them well. I prefer too take Alan Bligh and Chris Wraight's approach with them.

Edited November 4, 2023 by Abanshee

[Abanshee]

On 10/5/2023 at 9:36 PM, phandaal said:

 

Soon to be three times banned, no doubt. 

 

And yes, this forum is one of the tamest places on the Internet. I do not say that as a bad thing either. The moderators do a great job keeping this forum from becoming a cesspool like some other fan sites. Even "heated" arguments here are nothing compared to the chimpanzee fury that people unleash on each other elsewhere on the world wide web.

 

DakkaDakka comes to mind. 

[Marshal Rohr]

It’s Reddit. Reddit is just the Clark Kent to 4Chans Superman. They brigade forums to argue with authors like troglodyte paparazzi. The average Black Library reader online has devolved for meticulous collectors and information farmers to passive wiki readers and lore YouTube watchers who then go on to call people like Graham McNeill tourists and say absolutely out of pocket nonsense like siege specialist would have psychic powers to blow up walls. It’s the Giraffe Loken mindset on crack. 

[Abanshee]

1 hour ago, Marshal Rohr said:

It’s Reddit. Reddit is just the Clark Kent to 4Chans Superman. They brigade forums to argue with authors like troglodyte paparazzi. The average Black Library reader online has devolved for meticulous collectors and information farmers to passive wiki readers and lore YouTube watchers who then go on to call people like Graham McNeill tourists and say absolutely out of pocket nonsense like siege specialist would have psychic powers to blow up walls. It’s the Giraffe Loken mindset on crack. 

 

Why does everyone hate on McNeil anyways? I thought the Last Church was cool as hell.

[N1SB]

On 9/29/2023 at 5:04 PM, Petitioner's City said:

But why is this sense of needing to be a fan so prevalent? Is there actually a platonic Warhammer-ness? Is Warhammer still too insular? Is Warhammer able to be different things as a adaptation? 

 

Thank you for sharing that link and the thought exercise.  I read it awhile back working on the Call To Arms, always had it back of mind.

 

Here's my takeaway: Not every Warhammer writer is a Warhammer player.  But every Warhammer player is a Warhammer writer.

 

 

+++ DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FANDOMS & THE HOBBY +++

 

 

There was a conversation in our Dungeons & Dragons group; like most campaigns we're 50% actually playing and 50% talking about other stuff.  And the topic was a Star Wars thing.  It was about the Star Wars: Galaxy Edge in several Disney theme parks; we got a Disneyland here, would we get it, etc.

 

In just 1 of these parks there is a Build-Your-Own-Lightsaber workshop, the operative word being workSHOP because it's like a $200 or so entry fee.  You go into this "ride", you have these lightsaber bits, you put together your own personal one.  It's part of the extended universe lore, part of Jedi training.

 

(The Dark Side/Sith version, you have to beat up a Jedi and corrupt his lightsaber to become yours...so I guess you gotta rob them in the parking lot.)

 

The guy telling us, who did NOT play Warhammer, was gushing about it, "Isn't building your own thing cool?  Building's so innovative!  You're building your own personal part of the lore?  I've never seen anything like it, it's so unique to the Star Wars fandom, there's nothing like it in all other fandoms!"

 

This isn't to create a rivalry between our Hobby and the Star Wars fandom...I, for one, like both.

 

The 3 or 4 of us at that session, who were all Warhammer players, looked at him like, "Building your own is the bare minimum prequisite in 40k."  You gotta Build, Paint, Play, Read, Collect, then everyone's favourite part, Complain, Complain, Complain.  We didn't really reply, our nonchalance spoke volumes for us.

 

The realisation was this: compared to other fandoms, the Warhammer is on another level.

 

I say this almost metaphorically, because whereas the Build-Your-Own-Lightsaber is considered the peak, the apex, the ceiling of the Star Wars fandom...building your own army is the bare floor for the Hobby.  Other fandoms just have to watch films or streaming shows, we gotta work at ours.

 

 

+++ THE HOBBY IS LESS A FANDOM THAN A DOJO +++

 

 

A Frater once compared his FLGS to a martial arts dojo, and I've since noticed others using the similar comparisons.  And I think they're right!

 

It's hard to explain, but in martial arts, they're not toxic even as they hit each other.  It's like everyone is bringing out the best in one another.  Same could be said about a gym; they're all leveling up their Strength stat together.  Even a book club; they're all sharpening their analytical skills, like their Wis.

 

The difference between a fandom and these groups is a fandom mostly just watches, but these groups, and us, work at our craft.

 

We are, all of us, artists, painters.  We work on Dexterity.  We analyse BL novels.  Our medium is different, but the mindset is the same.

 

If a Star Wars fan tries to enhance his understanding of the Force by studying, say, Zen Buddhism, training in meditation, even kendo...that's kinda closer to what we do.  And he'd be laughed out of a Star Wars Celebration for being a tryhard, but we get it.  That's just his medium, and we share the mindset.

 

A professional actor goes to a fandom, like a ComiCon, "Hi, I'm playing this character and I never read the comics," then everyone goes, "YAAAAAY."  Someone walks into a dojo, the proper, respectful greeting is, "Welcome to our dojo.  I am the least of my brothers and I accept your challenge, KAKAT~TE~KOI!!!"

 

The pen is mightier than the sword, but I think of a scribe entering a dojo who is not a Miyamoto Musashi or a Yagyu or something.

 

 

+++ BECAUSE EVERY WARHAMMER PLAYER IS A WRITER +++

 

 

Warhammer is built on unreliable narrators, including outright Imperial propaganda, is a strong not shaky foundation, and you're part of it.

 

Every model you paint is part of the lore.  There's only 1 Roboute Guilliman and many models of him, but your one represents like an individual account (yours) of him.  A game, even a scripted one like from a campaign book, can have many different outcomes, and each is like a different account of the same event.

 

Every army list you have is like the 1st act of a story, with all the characters gathering together.  With a brush rather than a pen, you are writing pieces of Warhammer every time you lay it on a model.  Each game you play is, to your characters, a tragic life and death situation.

 

Warhammer is less an official setting than it is a platform that we, all of us, are contributors to and stakeholders in.  A big Wolverine fan bought all his comics; a Warhammer Hobbyist wrote his army's story.  Every model you own, built and painted, is a piece of Warhammer lore.

 

(I always wanted to do a story about that 1st ugly Space Marine we all painted, with the bulbous eyes, like his geneseed has flaw.)

 

So a writer comes in and says, "Here's what really happened, this is the official lore," a very understandable reaction would be to look at them like, "Do not cite the deep magic to me, witch, I was there when it was written, on the sundered earth of Cadia, in my and my brothers' blood."

 

They just wouldn't get it...unless that writer WAS there, too.

 

 

+++ AND SOME WARHAMMER WRITERS ARE PLAYERS +++

 

 

Kieron Gillen, co-founder of gaming website Rock Paper Shotgun, writer of the Uber comic series about Nazi superheroes (not the taxi service) and the Marneus Calgar comic, actually plays Necrons and I think Skaven, but like all of us, he dabbles in everything.  And he's a pretty good converter:

 

 

I mean look at that!  I think he's even using that Stirland Mud texture paint to actually create some texture.  This is way better than my Call To Arms!  (Now, I drybrushed the green glow, so it looks a lot more naturalistic, most ppl think it's just a play of light on the mini itself...but these conversions are amazing.)

 

Speaking of Necrons, Robert Rath mains Necrons, actually goes to our Warhammer Store, I got his signature to prove it, he even drew little Necrons for me.  And he literally wrote the most Warhammer story ever.  It's titled Fight In the Museum or something, like that Ben Stiller film.

 

In it, Trayzn the Infinite has this Tyranid corpse he wants to display in his museum.  It's all chopped up, so 1st he gets his Cyrptothralls to re-build it.  It's all desiccated like a dried-up mummy, so he carefully applies liquids to bring it to a semblance of life.  Then he fights it.

 

In other words, Build, Paint, Play...Trayzn is actually doing Warhammer in the 40k universe.  It's like the most meta in-joke of all time.

 

I should play Robert Rath with my triple C'tan list one of these days, the story is he's helping me stuff them back in the Tesseracts they ran away from.

 

 

+++ TL;DR: STREET CRED +++

 

 

TL;DR Warhammer writers need street cred like a Ganger in the Underhive, and by that I don't mean money.  It's measured in scars.

[Bryan Blaire]

Gotta disagree with both the premise and a lot of what you specifically said, N1SB, because many fandoms do the “build you own” as well.  I think that the 501st and Rebel Legion would probably take offense that you (or any other Star Wars adjacent individual) might think the Disneyland “build your own lightsaber” is the apex of that fandom.  There have been custom lightsaber hilt creators, both businesses and personal, and other custom costumers for Star Wars for far longer than Disney has operated the Galaxy’s Edge thing.  There are D&D players who build or commission and/or at least paint custom miniatures for their characters, or go to Cons cosplaying their unique or favorite D&D characters in costumes they have put together or even made themselves.  Some players I know even go so far as to build their own dungeon tile systems and miniature towns, etc., all to play the game.  Even in the comic fandoms, people build it themselves, whether they do their own art of characters, or go so far as to create their own characters who they cosplay with, or the wide range of things in between.

 

There are some 40K players who use services to build out and/or paint their armies, don’t read lore and don’t write anything for their own armies - there are Frater here on this very board that are much like this, some only play the basic storylines that GW creates.  There are other Frater right here on this board who only read the lore and don’t interact with the hobby in a miniature form at all.  Some 40K players never give a thought to the story behind their games at all - I’ve played plenty - and the hobby’s just there to move little men around - many still grey plastic, shoot/CCB them off the board, and then say “good game” at the end and walk away.  They are all equally 40K fans/part of the fandom alongside anyone who has been building and painting for 30+ years now.

 

The problem with painting with a broad brush is that the details get sloppy.  One size doesn’t fit all in any fandom, including 40K, and 40K doesn’t inherently demand more as a fandom than any other.

Edited November 5, 2023 by Bryan Blaire