"the war on WARHAMMER (40K)" Topic

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I don't play WH myself, and don't care about male/female characters, but the general topic of maintaining a canonical universe has a broad application.

I loathe WH 40K but I agree with the writer's position. Diversity is one thing but some things are bizarre. I can not unsee the recent movie with Saoraise Ronan and Margot Robbie in which Elizabeth I's ladies in waiting included one of African descent and another who was oriental. Good DEI but very bad history. This is the nose of the camel.

the nazis did the same. Everything was infused with National Socialism. That's how they change the culture.

First they came for the Space Marines. I didn't protest, since I wasn't a Space Marine…

"Warhammer 40k isn't just a video game…"

Ho Ho Ho. It's a video game? The writer goes on to describe the game played on a table! Where the pieces are "meticulously painted", like he's describing ritual practices on the Cannibal Islands.

Follow Critical Drinker or Nerdrotic to make you OUTRAGED about movies and TV shows that I would never bother to watch anyway.
A Puerto Rican Snow White! 😱
Wymin running Star Wars! 😱
Obnoxious actresses! Excuse me, we have to call them "actors" now.
Did you know that any movie up for an Oscar from now must have a DEI cast and crew? Yawn.
I think that "we" should impose DEI standards on the Super Bowl because there aren't enough White players. I once heard a caller on Rush Limbaugh demand an all White NFL. Rush answered "Who would watch that?" It left the caller OUTRAGED.
Male models don't make as much money as female models! Does that outrage you?

I am afraid to read the article.

So, which group is complaining that they are underrepresented as xenophobic homicidal psychopaths?

No matter … I will continue to believe from the bottom of my heart that every human being is capable of embodying and mainfesting the absolute worst that is possible by our species. And then someone will raise the bar.

One more thing… The writer mentions that the latest OUTRAGE is the concept of "female Custodes". Pardon me, but I don't have a clue what a Custode is. So it doesn't upset me all that much. 🤷

What does bother me is the raping and pillaging of Tolkien that is going on in Rings of Power. Bear in mind that I've never seen a single episode because I refuse to shell out bucks to the Evil Empire Amazon by "joining" Amazon Prime. I have twice ordered from them and been signed up, and charged twice for joining Amazon Prime.
I keep track of the OUTRAGE by watching Critical Drunker, Nerdrotic and the astonishingly beautiful Snarky Jay. What a babe!

Greenskin Lives Matter?

Seems to me everything DEI scream heresy and should get the commissars to stomp it out.

Honestly I don't care about Femstodes. Gender doesn't alter game stats so you could have always had all females under the helmets.

I found the portrayal in Tithes to be the opposite of the idea of a female Custode. No breasts or anything remotely feminine: just a jacked up muscle mommy.

The Imperium is a religious totalitarian government where Nazis meet medieval Catholics. The idea of inclusion is laughable, now go purge the heretic and defile the mutant!

What audience exists that would enjoy the type of game they keep falling to sell?

There was a game, well funded and decently hyped up, that would have checked every box for this "modern audience," giving them a cornucopia of diversity designed to earn praise all around. This game was Concord, and it failed in such a way that it very well may be the worst game to have ever been made, even surpassing the ancient E.T. game [Dana's note: I just died at "E.T. being referred to as "ancient."]

Records show that in the first week of its official launch, it could not even reach a thousand players. Strange, I thought this was exactly what the modern audience would want? This leaves us with two conclusions for why this happened: One, this "modern audience" is such an incredibly small percentage of the population that they have been overrepresented, or two, not even the target audience liked the game. I say that it's both, with a majority of gamers not falling into these agenda centered audiences — and even the people that these companies predicted would be in that crowd disliked being treated as exotic and abnormal. The exact same thing is happening with Warhammer, with similar decisions coming down from on high, suddenly and without warning, sending shockwaves of disappointment and fear through loyal fans concerned that their favorite series will succumb to the exact same rot plaguing most of our modern media.

Doc, go to the Critical Drinker's YouTube channel. There is a veritable plethora (channeling Howard Cossel here) of instances where companies try to force "The Message" on "modern audiences". It doesn't matter if it fails and they lose money. They are always righteously right. The blame lies solely on the racist homophobes who won't buy the product.
Mea culpa!

YouTube link

For the latest.

John, yes, and I will take your word for it!

We did this in April…..

….the whole of the GW universe has changed and changed again. Because it is all made up, and new stuff gets made up to keep it all going.

You know – like things appear in Star Wars and Star Trek and…. everything else…. when they never got mentioned before.

Makes me wonder how 2% of the population can ruin it for everyone else.
Remember a lie told over and over and over again becomes the truth!

And hey, the April thread was started by the same person…as a reminder – we eventually recalled the 1987 – yes 37 years ago, so deep GW lore – release of female space marine figures.

So….this isn't even new, it has always been part of GW. So we can all stop worrying about it….

We have always been at war with East Asia.

"So, which group is complaining that they are underrepresented as xenophobic homicidal psychopaths?"

No doubt they'd have conniption fits about Escher gangers as well… ;-)

It's not that new stuff is added, but the nature of the new. Not just Woke, but destructive of the old.

What exactly is "Woke"?
It used to be a term by Black people with a different meaning.
Then it was appropriated by right wing zealots who needed something to be mad at. It now means "That which I consider icky," which is much like why Orwell was so frustrated at the way people used the term "fascist" to describe things they didn't like.

40K has always been self destructive. They are always on the hunt for the slightest taint of heresy and the need to exterminate it. That's one of the reasons I couldn't get interested in it. And, the price too of course.

Those with Dark Eldar, Necrons, Orks and so on will not be affected by this in the least. Let the 2% who care, care. I'm sure it bothers Henry Cavill. 😄

Me? I'm painting whaleboats for Moby Dick, Rosa's Cantina, Comanche and Spanish. So I don't really give a hoot about 40K, except for the amusement it gives me as an outsider.

John
Big fan of the Drinker.
He saved me from watching Rings of Power.

"Escher gangers"?
I had vaguely heard of them, but that's it. So I looked them up, and saw the figures. 🙄
As Miss Jean Brodie would say, "If this is the kind of thing you like, you will like this kind of thing."
Eh, I bet that very few players actually go to the effort of painting them.

So, Doc. Always remember that GM always talks about "The Warhammer Hobby". With the very snide insinuation that we do not exist. They cannot comprehend Historical Wargaming, to the extent that we do not exist. We, on the other hand, acknowledge that they exist. Only as far as I acknowledge that cannibals live on the Trobriand Islands, and that a platypus is a mammal with webbed feet, poisonous spurs, a beaver tail and they lay eggs. They exist, but they don't bother me.
To quote another philosopher of my yoot, Alfred E Neuman, "What? Me Worry?"

I also think that break dancing is dumb, but I simply don't bother to watch it.

"Woke" is what used to be called political correctness. It is censorship, often self-censorship, and can be deadly as truths are unable to be uttered.

There are statistical truths, for example, about WHO commits most violent crimes, or about abortion rates by ethnicity, that cannot be mentioned without an accusation of racism. Hard to deal with problems that cannot be named.

"Woke" means what you want it to mean.

Woke is not the insult some people seem to think it is…

Well, I'm using it the way tens of millions of us use it. And yes, the left is proud of it. It's just the old PC, but even more aggressive.

You're using it the way you, and many others, want to use it today? Hmm, talk about the willful obsuring of history! History teachers and scholars would have a fit!
Invent a new word.

"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less"
Humpty Dumpty

So, what do YOU find "icky"?

I find it icky to make it impossible to speak truths for fear of offending.

And John, yes, "the QUESTION is, which is to rule. That's all."

HUCKLEBERRY FINN is arguably the greatest American novel, or maybe tied with MOBY DICK. Jim is one of the most noble characters in literature. His full appellation, as Twain uses it with what we come to understand is deliberate irony, not only cannot be uttered today, but is the reason one of the great monuments of the American spirit is no longer much studied.

That is the cost of PC and now of Woke.

Oh yes, doc mcb, you never get to say what you want to….not even in this thread that you started or the previous thread on the subject that you started a few months ago or your several threads defending slave owners….

…it must be terrible to never get to share your opinions

I have to wonder who this "they" is who won't allow us to say what we used to.
Who won't allow us to enjoy Blazing Saddles.
Who forbid us to read Huckleberry Finn.
Who force us to torture ourselves with bad grammar and mandatory pronouns.
Who demand that we watch movies we have no interest in.

Personally, I think it's all a plot by … someone! It has to be a plot!

I remember being forced to read the incredibly boring Silas Marner. But that was a nun who was forcing us, so at least that's explained.
But then, there's all these film critics who demand that I consider Citizen Kane the greatest film ever! But I find it boring. 😴
When someone DEMANDS that I share their opinion, I just ignore them. Why can't the "anti-Woke" zealots just ignore those icky people and just laugh at them? As the King of Siam said, "It is a puzzlement."
By the way, ive never met anyone who introduced "themselves" by giving me their pronouns.

Darn those woke nuns !

"….the whole of the GW universe has changed and changed again. Because it is all made up, and new stuff gets made up to keep it all going."

Yes it has. But it used to change to sell more figures, this change is to placate people who don't even play the game. Not a good business model.

"I have to wonder who this "they" is who won't allow us to say what we used to….Why can't the "anti-Woke" zealots just ignore those icky people and just laugh at them? "

Because woke isn't aimed at us. We're old and don't care what people think when we say things. It's aimed at the next generation and is meant to intimidate them into what the political masters of the schools want. Take a look at college campuses and see the antisemitism. That's woke at work. Look at the burning, killing, and looting of a few years ago, that's woke at work. If we don't push back the next generation will be cowed into accepting whatever is pushed on them.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Except that in 1987 (a very not woke time) GW made female space marines.

So it has always been part of the game.

What really annoys me is the prevalence of this stupid nursery word "icky"

DBDD

Blame me for that. It's meant as an insult. People who call everything they don't like "fascist" don't ever really understand the meaning of the term. So it's a catch-all term that means nothing more than they don't like the target.
I find the use of the term "Woke" equally ridiculous. Nobody can agree on what it means, but all the cool kids are using it anyway.

"… This game was Concord, and it failed in such a way …"

It was pulled after 2 weeks because it had only about 750 subscribers worldwide. There was another online game (can't remember the name of it) that only had 18 players. I imagine the corporate accountants can probably claim these multi-million $ projects as tax write-offs… ;-)

Critical Drinker and Snarky Jay 💕 often imply money laundering. I can't argue with that. 😄

I think icky is a good word.

How about political correctness? Is that okay to use?

In the Tim Clancy novel Patriot Games, the PIRA are discussing whether some action would be "politically sound". This was before PC became a popular term.
Like Woke, "politically correct" has now acquired a pejorative meaning that goes way beyond its original meaning.
So, as Humpty Dumpty says, it means what I want it to mean. You know what you want it to mean, so go ahead. These days, language and grammar don't mean much anymore. It's been festering for a long time, but the Internet, with its lack of editing, has made it worse.

By the way, in the movie (SPOILER ALERT!) Sean Bean dies. 😱

If the "Woke mob" ever find out what we are doing in our secret basements and painting desks, we will be in real trouble!
I am seeking to commemorate Spanish atrocities against peace living Native American Comanches!
In the past, I have commemorated British Imperialism in Africa and India!

I keep waiting for news of a Woke Mob™️ attacking a gaming convention because they had heard that someone was playing with Confederate Flags if Hatred!

"I find the use of the term "Woke" equally ridiculous. Nobody can agree on what it means, but all the cool kids are using it anyway."

I shall quote US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…"

:-)