Ok, so I am drunk, I’m going to do a rambling post. Hooray. Choose life
So there is this question that is often asked about this century. Like the second half of the 20th century under that version of capitalism, there is this definition of genres and decades and so on, I wrote about this the other day.
But then this was a thing that occurred to me about current times which is something that I was not fully aware of not living in ‘the west’. Warhammer 40k is one of the biggest fiction things in pop culture for young people. I assume mostly suburban, but it is huge, I bet that there are some kids in Brixton knife criming each other over custom Ork Speedbikes or whatever. Like young people love the tabletop stuff, and needless to say since it’s the 21st century they are just on this whole level at the obsessive end, like people 3D print their own monsters. I experienced it personally at a job in Vietnam where everyone was young, they all had these game nights where they played things like Settlers of Catan and those stupid card games. And then the lads had WH40K armies. No figures, but still
I’ll give a quick summary of my 40k experience. When I was 11 – 15 at the age when that stuff can actually happen in your head if someone tells you, it was a big deal. They had a boom then, they made these games like Space Hulk and Space Marines where you got your mum to buy it for your birthday and you had endless games.
And it was also this weird cult where they had novels and heavy metal records and there were these guys in London inventing it all, probably from Wales or the South West and living in shared houses like the rest of us.
Democracy may have ruined England. We are such a bunch of fascists, like the Italians would kill for the level of evil we have.
They kind of did
The story is that everything failed and there are these evil races fighting for pretty much no reason. humans are this huge empire that doesn’t really have a point except fighting, there are Eldar who are elves who are the smartest mortal beings, but their perfect world failed 1000s of years ago, they also have no reason to fight except for fighting. They were defending themselves, but it’s gone on way longer than them being good. Orks who are apparently a fungus that is designed to fight. They added insects and robots while I was away, but it’s the same, they have no purpose except to fight.
There is deep lore that there are ancient beings who created all of the races to fight. and it’s all for some pre galaxy purpose. But it is still nihilism. It’s kind of the point
But anyway, my point was that it was this really teenage boy thing that being a stereotype I abandoned and got into music and girls. And being self centred I assumed that it had just disappeared. But it didn’t. It is now huge, it came back to me about 15 years ago when they started making computer games and oh my God you got to control platoons and have the pointless wars. I have vague memories of getting good at the original Dawn of War and just WWI sending endless genetically modified humans to die and everything constantly blowing up, and hours disappearing.
They turned into a huge corporation, they made it big in America. It was this weird parody and it turned into the thing. And that is finally me getting to the point.
Why does this appeal now?
I think that we are in post post modernism and at this stage it’s better to think about the humans in the Kubler Ross grief model.
- denial
- anger
- bargaining
- depression
- acceptance
Let’s go back to the birth of youth culture when young people were freed from work, there is denial, it’s ok, they gave you a car and you are getting your end wet, it’s great. Then the anger and bargaining starts to appear in the 1960s and 70s. like it’s all a con, and The Jungian Shadow starts to appear. But there is this peace treaty, a deal is reached.
Then the 80s is depression, There Is No Alternative is the mantra. Everything goes back upstairs, the oligarchy take over. We are Russia. We have shit clothes.
Then acceptance. we are the fun colony. But look at this mushroom ‘arrggghh don’t look at it’
So anyway, Warhammer is this parody of fascism. Fascists love greco roman imperialism, yeah man
But the thing with the question. Warhammer 40k is also very cynical and ‘grimdark’ like it is not pro fascist, it’s just an insanely deep dive into fascism which is I believe the death drive. We all are cunts, I know that I am uniquely bad, but I have known enough people, people get drunk and are evil, men and women, we all have a little personal demon.
So we live in this kind of fascistic culture, like it is, come on….and then people gravitate towards the fascism. It’s also positive because it is cynical and educated. Like it’s a credible version of hell and it’s all corrupt species.
What is beyond the death drive?
Interestingly a thing about this ‘death cult’ is what they are really into is building insane models. Like what they actually love is the art and the mythos, I was putting myself in the shoes of a twat calling them a death cult, they are usually the nerdiest most chill people ever.
I did try, I just can’t get excited about fiction in the way that they do ‘oh my god those bats absorb bullets’ well yeah, cos you made them up
But yes they have this obsession with destruction but all they want to do is to make things to be destroyed.
I think that the idea of making the drive to die and nihilistically give up feeds into the cartoon authoritariansim. We let them down, their parents were the people who the Fight Club message of don’t try appealed to . and come on, we aren’t stupid, we are not falling for it again. i fell for obama for gods sake, like only cos i was told to, but i did.
And we get back to the false question of ‘what is the alternative?’
and there is just an answer.
When Europe was about to have a communist revolution the man Keynes appeared and with very British Empire thinking invented a platercast for the bandage. We can spend that money on schools and hospitals and houses, and then that will defeat the communists. And it worked, of course it worked, that’s what they were asking for.
So yes defeat communism by being fair
Should they be socialists?
I think that socialists are like forever, eternally boring. It’s the puzzle, i mean on one level it’s how do you be mum? but it’s also like ‘how do we beat dad?
oh lets just let the cunt fail and laugh at him, that’s funny. makes our failure more bearable.
there needs to be no threat of violence. and how can that be justificed in a regmine that justifies itself by a monopoly on violence?
I dunno. I mean thinking about it twas ever thus, they are so interested in us. they are the ones in opposition. like even me who is a really square guy, i just do my thing and people invent stories about me.
Ok that is a long ramble, i dread myself reading this in the morning. Burial NYC just came on and I have a big pool of sadness to dive into
So lets start again since nobody is reading and be scientific.
W40K is this incredibly nihilistic vision of the future where fascism came true and there is no appeal except to power. It has an incredibly impenetrable lore, I do know a little bit of it, but I tried to learn it and there is no way to get deep into the lore without listening hours of insane fiction and reading the books. I guess that the fact that it is so arcane is a big part of it, like it’s kind of a religion because there is no way to understand it, people agree on the basics, but then there is just so much of it that it’s impossible to have an opinion.
That doesn’t apply to traditional religion now because compared to a modern creation there is not really that much information. Of course there is insane depth to it in that you can learn the original languages and study the origin of the texts and so on, but that is not accessible in the same way. Like Warhammer is contemporary fiction, just because it is so nerdy it is for and by nerds and they are all writing their own stuff and inventing their own warriors and so on.
I think that it’s the authenticity and interactivity of it. I can see it keep getting bigger, they are huge in computer games and they are always trying to make a film about it.
That actually speaks to another thing about it that appeals, like it is so big and dense that they can’t really commercialise it, plus because is just so nerdy, like of course something like this is very teenage boy, and it’s why most people just leave it alone, because when you get into girls your interests become more neutral, music, films etc, and I do agree that gender is a spectrum and so on, but I’m about to finish because nobody is going to read this far in an unstructured essay, but just look at the pictures that I am about to dot throughout this post, our perception of gender is completely a social construct, but it’s one that we all grew up in, and this is all hyper male.
I’d venture that that is part of the joke, because being clever nerds who come up with this stuff, they are very aware of irony, like there are pretty much no women, it’s just everything wrong with men multiplied by a huge number
Ok. That’s it. I am finishing this off the next day, I didn’t read it because it’s too long, if you read all of this, er, well done I guess.
I should make a structured essay on the topic, it does deserve serious discussion
Leave a Reply