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When I said fanfiction I meant less "sweeping change" and more "gently caress GW I can write a short bolter-porn story better than Nick Kyme."
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Nov 13, 2013 23:29
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Cream_Filling posted:Except how does being unable to make huge sweeping changes for change's sake in the continuity somehow preclude you from exploring the inner workings of the Imperium? The subject you just mentioned - a schism between the Mechanicus and the rest of the Imperium - was already the plot of Abnett's book on titans. Similarly, a lot of books such as the recent Emperor's Gift deal specifically with infighting between different power groups in the Imperium. Fan fiction aside, I think wanting some form of completion to the story arcs that have been set up (especially by the HH novels) is perfectly reasonable. Sure, a lot of X-Files fan-fiction is terrible. But let's be honest: the actual X-Files started to suck too, precisely because they were unwilling to simply finish things and release all that tension they'd built up (leading, as you say, to bad writers just doing it themselves, and poorly). Stories have beginnings, middles, and ends. Good stories eventually release the tension they've built up, provide climax and conclusion. If you don't do that you've got a lovely story on your hands. And if you do it well people will even forgive earlier sins (see: Six Feet Under). In its current state, the 40k universe isn't *just* a setting, but a story, one that begins with the Horus Heresy and ends at some point in the 41st millenium or whatever. It's got a beginning, a *mostly* empty middle, and a bunch of elements pointing towards its end (maybe the primarchs, the Emperor, or various other major players will wake up and/or return, Necrons/Tyranids/Chaos are coming, the sky is falling, etc.), but in reality, it never will end, and that's, well... pretty lame.
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Nov 13, 2013 23:35
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Also you can totally tell a story of someone struggling against the bureaucracy of the Imperium to get something important done quickly. Also the HH novels are going to have an ending, that much is basically guaranteed.
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Nov 13, 2013 23:36
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There is alot of room for stories in the years between 30k and 40k. I mean, of the 13 black crusades, we only kno poo poo about 3 of them (1st, 12th, 13th). There is huge room there. Like say, you wanna write about how the 8th black crusade, I dunno, openned a warp rift so bad that the eye slightly expanded to it's current area?
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Nov 13, 2013 23:42
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^^^^ To be fair to him, Dan Abnett setting the Gaunt's Ghosts books back in 700-odd M41 was MIND BLOWING when pretty much everything was happening in 999 M41. At one point GW got so bad at cramming things into that year that Ghazghkull was leading two WAAAAGH!s on Armageddon at the same time. Don't ask me how Yarrick managed to cram a few decades of haring around the galaxy after him with some Space Marine bros between them, he just did. DirtyRobot posted:In its current state, the 40k universe isn't *just* a setting, but a story, one that begins with the Horus Heresy and ends at some point in the 41st millenium or whatever. It's got a beginning, a *mostly* empty middle, and a bunch of elements pointing towards its end (maybe the primarchs, the Emperor, or various other major players will wake up and/or return, Necrons/Tyranids/Chaos are coming, the sky is falling, etc.), but in reality, it never will end, and that's, well... pretty lame.
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Nov 14, 2013 00:04
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DirtyRobot posted:In its current state, the 40k universe isn't *just* a setting, but a story, one that begins with the Horus Heresy and ends at some point in the 41st millenium or whatever. It's got a beginning, a *mostly* empty middle, and a bunch of elements pointing towards its end (maybe the primarchs, the Emperor, or various other major players will wake up and/or return, Necrons/Tyranids/Chaos are coming, the sky is falling, etc.), but in reality, it never will end, and that's, well... pretty lame. The problem here is that it's not actually a story. It's a setting. A story with no middle or end isn't actually a story. Almost none of the characters from the start of the story are actually alive and doing things anymore - almost all were killed off or otherwise put in stasis at the end of the HH. Intentionally. Because the end of the HH is the mythic origin story for the setting. Almost all the current characters, except for a few exceptions like Bjorn, have been around for maybe a thousand years or so max in a chronology that runs for 10,000 years, which is utterly incomprehensible from any human scale and was chosen specifically because it's incomprehensibly huge so they don't have to actually worry too much about chronology or running out of storytelling space. And most of those characters are kept quite skeletal and conveniently vague unless picked up by a BL author since they're meant to be notables and flavor for the game.
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Nov 14, 2013 00:21
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bunnyofdoom posted:There is alot of room for stories in the years between 30k and 40k. I mean, of the 13 black crusades, we only kno poo poo about 3 of them (1st, 12th, 13th). There is huge room there. Like say, you wanna write about how the 8th black crusade, I dunno, openned a warp rift so bad that the eye slightly expanded to it's current area? And if you want another massive civil war, there's the Age of Apostasy, which is a sort of quasi-reformation. Knowing that Hitler loses doesn't really affect my enjoyment of WWII fiction because most of the time, Hitler is more a looming historical force or maybe a sly cameo and not an actual character. And even then, the Michael Shaara school of historical fiction shows you can even put in famous historical figures as major characters and still write a compelling account. Knowing the inquisition would never nuke Fenris and have it stick didn't really affect the tension when I read Emperor's Gift either. And then the scale of happenings in 40k is several orders of magnitude larger than even the huge scale of real-life history. OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Nov 14, 2013 |
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Nov 14, 2013 00:22
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Cream_Filling posted:And if you want another massive civil war, there's the Age of Apostasy, which is a sort of quasi-reformation. True. There's alot that could be written. Not even just siege of Terra mk 2.
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Nov 14, 2013 00:24
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DirtyRobot posted:Fan fiction aside, I think wanting some form of completion to the story arcs that have been set up (especially by the HH novels) is perfectly reasonable. X-Files got terrible when Chris Carter finally admitted all the little clues and hints from the first few seasons were just random mysterious stuff he wrote in with no long term plan or outline. That's about as fanfiction as it gets, literally writing in things that aren't planned or plotted out in any way.
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Nov 14, 2013 03:29
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Cream_Filling posted:The problem here is that it's not actually a story. It's a setting. A story with no middle or end isn't actually a story. Almost none of the characters from the start of the story are actually alive and doing things anymore - almost all were killed off or otherwise put in stasis at the end of the HH. Intentionally. Because the end of the HH is the mythic origin story for the setting. Almost all the current characters, except for a few exceptions like Bjorn, have been around for maybe a thousand years or so max in a chronology that runs for 10,000 years, which is utterly incomprehensible from any human scale and was chosen specifically because it's incomprehensibly huge so they don't have to actually worry too much about chronology or running out of storytelling space. And most of those characters are kept quite skeletal and conveniently vague unless picked up by a BL author since they're meant to be notables and flavor for the game. A lot of the primarchs etc. do seem as though they could come back, which is part of what surprised me, reading the HH series, and part of what gives the 40k setting the sense that it's part of the conclusion to that initial story. When I was into 40k as a kid, ten years ago, reading a bunch of the fluff, I didn't get that sense. Back then, the heresy was just part of the mythic past of this 40k setting. But now... not so much; now there's a narrative thread connecting them. But because 40k is still seen as a "setting," that thread won't be taken to its completion. That's a bummer. pentyne posted:X-Files got terrible when Chris Carter finally admitted all the little clues and hints from the first few seasons were just random mysterious stuff he wrote in with no long term plan or outline. That's about as fanfiction as it gets, literally writing in things that aren't planned or plotted out in any way. I don't know the degree to which Chris Carter just dropped in totally random stuff, and I agree that that can be pretty terrible if it really is just totally willy nilly, but I've said it before and I'll say it again: when it comes to writing and TV series', goons fetishize pre-planning everything out. But that's not totally how it works, even with the best of endings. Half of a good ending isn't having everything perfectly set up from the get-go, but rather re-reading one's own work and coming up with an appropriate ending based on that. This is what Vince Gilligan did for Breaking Bad, and what lead to the finale in Six Feet Under. If anything, based on what you say, it sounds like Carter was unwilling to take his own hints and myth-building seriously. He just wasn't interested in addressing the questions he'd raised, so he stuck to raising more questions rather than turning towards an endgame and offering appropriate, satisfying answers. DirtyRobot fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Nov 14, 2013 |
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Nov 14, 2013 05:24
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I'm getting the impression that you'd like Arthur to have returned as promised in Le Morte d'Arthur etc, and are slightly peeved that he still hasn't shown up.
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Nov 14, 2013 05:42
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DirtyRobot posted:I think at this point we have to agree to disagree. I understand that 40k is ostensibly a "setting," but they've introduced a bunch of elements that are, for all intents and purposes, a story. There's are beginnings, hints, pieces put into place, and foreshadowing about what's to come. I don't play the game. I don't give much of a poo poo about the setting in and of itself. But the "ending" to the HH series seems to me not to be the battle between the Emperor and Horus, but some type of endgame that only comes about 10,000 years later. That's a really weird opinion. The climax of the Horus Heresy is pretty clearly the Emperor's showdown with Horus. Where exactly does the narrative thread go after around M32 or whatever when basically all the major consequences of the climax have been resolved or stabilized and also every primarch has ascended to daemonhood and left the material world, died, or disappeared mysteriously? Beginnings, hints, pieces, and foreshadowing aren't a story. They're setups for stories. Which are useful when we're talking about a setting for wargames and role-playing (which at the start of the IP was not yet fully separated from wargames) so as to provide hooks, atmosphere, and reference points for story-telling. A story requires an actual, you know, story. I think you're confusing the connections and references used to tie different stories together as part of a shared brand and setting for an actual coherent narrative. And if you don't actually care about the setting then what exactly are you looking for? Aren't you essentially saying that you wish the setting would end because you don't like the feeling that it's unfinished? The entire point of a setting is to feel unfinished so that the player wants to participate and fill in the gaps with their own stories. At the end of a tv show, you're supposed to feel like everything's resolved and there's no more stories to tell because the point is to end the tv show and get viewers to leave and free up a space in their brains to start watching other shows instead, hopefully on the same channel. OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Nov 14, 2013 |
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Nov 14, 2013 06:28
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Cream_Filling posted:Except how does being unable to make huge sweeping changes for change's sake in the continuity somehow preclude you from exploring the inner workings of the Imperium? It doesn't, but my point is that for me, exploring a significant socio-poliotical event should be open-ended in terms of how it affects the greater setting. GW restricts such exploration in order to preserve their existing game rules and canon, which is why I suspect that the only foreseeable evolution of the setting will come from "fanfiction" if at all. The only problem would be maintaining the consistency of the "flavor" with everyone writing whatever they want. Thats why I mentioned the idea of forming an association to produce fan-created expansion of the setting while maintaining some degree of consistency. It would probably end in tears but hey its just an idea.
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Nov 14, 2013 07:01
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Mr.48 posted:It doesn't, but my point is that for me, exploring a significant socio-poliotical event should be open-ended in terms of how it affects the greater setting. GW restricts such exploration in order to preserve their existing game rules and canon, which is why I suspect that the only foreseeable evolution of the setting will come from "fanfiction" if at all. The only problem would be maintaining the consistency of the "flavor" with everyone writing whatever they want. Thats why I mentioned the idea of forming an association to produce fan-created expansion of the setting while maintaining some degree of consistency. It would probably end in tears but hey its just an idea. It's hard enough for authors of long series to avoid becoming victims of their own worldbuilding end up using retcon to change the rules. In a series that's been in print for 23 years now under umpteen Authors it's no surprise GW discourages the authors from delving into the nitty gritty details of the Imperium given how they already had to retcon the entire Inquisition War omnibus to open up the IP for more growth.
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Nov 14, 2013 07:14
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Mr.48 posted:It doesn't, but my point is that for me, exploring a significant socio-poliotical event should be open-ended in terms of how it affects the greater setting. GW restricts such exploration in order to preserve their existing game rules and canon, which is why I suspect that the only foreseeable evolution of the setting will come from "fanfiction" if at all. The only problem would be maintaining the consistency of the "flavor" with everyone writing whatever they want. Thats why I mentioned the idea of forming an association to produce fan-created expansion of the setting while maintaining some degree of consistency. It would probably end in tears but hey its just an idea. Except again you're obsessed with scale. The 40k universe isn't like the US with a federal government and where TV means that an action in DC reaches LA by the 6 o'clock news. You could do all of that as soon as you abandon the (rather grandiose and pointless) notion of your events affecting the entire galaxy and instead restrict it to something sane like a subsector (a made up grouping that really just means "super big and about the max distance the characters could reasonably travel"). Forgeworld made up an entire subsector or whatever and then destroyed the whole thing in a single book for Imperial Armor (the new Necron one). It was also pretty dumb, actually, in part because the storyline was shallow and the writing and level of detail didn't at all give the impression of a massive campaign across multiple worlds. It was like basically three battles and floop the Imperial commander is a retard so Necrons win everything. If something you're making up would seriously affect the entire galaxy, then almost certainly it's too big for a manageable story anyway and it's probably pretty silly to boot. Even really 'big' fluff events like Armageddon, the Badab War, or the 13th Black Crusade didn't really change that much about the galaxy or setting at all. Even sometimes when introducing whole new factions to buy models for, like the Tau, often they do almost nothing to the overall galaxy at large even though they are a big deal locally. If you want to actually change the fluff in your own private continuity then go ahead, making up what comes next is pretty much part of the game. But I don't see what you bring to the table that will get other people to follow you when the vanilla setting offers the same freedoms anyway. OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Nov 14, 2013 |
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Nov 14, 2013 07:20
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Having a "premium" line of books has obviously worked out really well for BL with all the HH stuff. I wonder if they'll try something similar once it wraps up, and if so what it might be. Age of Apostasy?
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Nov 14, 2013 07:33
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Mechafunkzilla posted:Having a "premium" line of books has obviously worked out really well for BL with all the HH stuff. I wonder if they'll try something similar once it wraps up, and if so what it might be. Age of Apostasy? Maybe the Siege of Terra will be written in real-time so the HH series takes another 10 years or something to end.
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Nov 14, 2013 07:36
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Cream_Filling posted:Maybe the Siege of Terra will be written in real-time so the HH series takes another 10 years or something to end. Shut up they might hear you.
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Nov 14, 2013 15:23
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There's an article on the Wayback Machine about the original GW attempt to sell books: https://web.archive.org/web/20130322130711/http://www.vectormagazine.co.uk/article.asp?articleID=42 It gains a bit if you know about British sf writing at the time (eg Ian Watson was very prominent, Terry Pratchett had only published one or two Discworld books at the time he considered writng for GW) but it's interesting.
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Nov 14, 2013 16:02
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House Louse posted:...Terry Pratchett had only published one or two Discworld books at the time he considered writng for GW... Holy poo poo, I seriously can't imagine how a Pratchett-written 40k novel would turn out. It does kinda fit his literary theme of "people getting by in a ludicrous world," so maybe it would be a bit like a Ciaphas Cain novel. He might have a lotta fun with the Orks if GW let him give them dialogue, but otherwise...
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Nov 14, 2013 16:47
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It'd probably turn out a lot like a better written Ciaphas Cain.
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Nov 14, 2013 17:36
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The Age of Apostasy is something I really want a series of books on, the attempts at forced conversion of the marine chapters is something that fascinates me. I would also really like to see the Nova Terra Interregnum explored because that was the Imperium without a leadership. Both of those periods are easily capable of matching the Horus Heresy series in terms of the number of stories to tell within one sub-setting of the 40k universe. Some What If endgame books might be interesting if ADB wrote them, but they really aren't necessary at all. Lovely Joe Stalin fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Nov 14, 2013 |
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Nov 14, 2013 18:15
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Any "What If" books would only be good if they got completely silly with them, a la Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe. Otherwise they would just be the worst kind of dork-rear end 'canon'-building nonsense. For what it's worth, I also think the HH books are exactly that to a degree and have overall made the setting less interesting, despite many of the books being fun to read. Mechafunkzilla fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Nov 14, 2013 |
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Nov 14, 2013 18:28
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Mr.48 posted:It doesn't, but my point is that for me, exploring a significant socio-poliotical event should be open-ended in terms of how it affects the greater setting.
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Nov 14, 2013 19:02
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A million worlds, y'all.
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Nov 14, 2013 19:11
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And untold trillions of souls.
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Nov 14, 2013 19:24
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DrFrankenStrudel posted:It's hard enough for authors of long series to avoid becoming victims of their own worldbuilding end up using retcon to change the rules.
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Nov 14, 2013 19:38
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Cream_Filling posted:That's a really weird opinion. The climax of the Horus Heresy is pretty clearly the Emperor's showdown with Horus. Where exactly does the narrative thread go after around M32 or whatever when basically all the major consequences of the climax have been resolved or stabilized and also every primarch has ascended to daemonhood and left the material world, died, or disappeared mysteriously? How is it a "weird opinion" to want the closure of a story arc? You're completely ignoring the larger arc of the story of W40K by centering on little stories and tiny plots. The overall plot is that humanity is in dire trouble, being pressed in on all sides by every monster imaginable, and WG is stretching that arc out indefinitely because if they concluded it, and they couldn't come up with something else, welp money. "Beginnings, hints, pieces and foreshadowing" are all they have going for them. That's the entirety of M41. If they keep going the way they are, that's all there is. Everything will be kept in a continuing status quo, with humanity kept forever on the edge of existence. There's no resolution, no victory or defeat, no denouement. Yes, "THERE IS ONLY WAR." But after awhile that gets stale and boring. I mean, WG can probably get new fans for awhile, and maybe there are people who want to fap to bolter porn forever, but the overall arc gets boring after you've read 40+ novels about how poo poo's RIGHT THERE ON THE EDGE. Gets dull.
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Nov 14, 2013 21:57
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They have been 'right on the edge' for 30 years you dummy.
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Nov 14, 2013 22:04
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VanSandman posted:They have been 'right on the edge' for 30 years you dummy. Kinda my point.
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Nov 14, 2013 22:05
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The Southern Dandy posted:Kinda my point. My point is they've made it work for 30 years and if they aren't totally retarded (which is admittedly a long shot) they'll make it work for another 30. Doing an endgame is stupid.
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Nov 14, 2013 22:10
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VanSandman posted:My point is they've made it work for 30 years and if they aren't totally retarded (which is admittedly a long shot) they'll make it work for another 30. Doing an endgame is stupid. And not doing an endgame just drives some people off because it's pointless nonsense. Also, there's no binary HUMAN GOOD/XENOS BAD. Somebody can win something and things can go on. Keeping the status quo indefinitely just gets boring. The Southern Dandy fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Nov 14, 2013 |
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Nov 14, 2013 22:11
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The Southern Dandy posted:And not doing an endgame just drives some people off because it's pointless nonsense. You don't seem to understand. They have no interest whatsoever in advancing the narrative. Doing so would be detrimental to their business model. If you don't like it, sorry but that's just how it is.
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Nov 14, 2013 22:18
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The Southern Dandy posted:How is it a "weird opinion" to want the closure of a story arc? You're completely ignoring the larger arc of the story of W40K by centering on little stories and tiny plots. The overall plot is that humanity is in dire trouble, being pressed in on all sides by every monster imaginable, and WG is stretching that arc out indefinitely because if they concluded it, and they couldn't come up with something else, welp money. A story arc is usually when things happen to characters and then characters make choices and interact. You know, individuals with names that do stuff and talk to each other. All of humanity everywhere isn't really a character. I guess it would be closure when we find out if humanity is eventually utterly destroyed or ascends into psychic super-beings, but somehow I think that would be kind of anticlimactic and end, well, the universe. I don't read a book and then think "okay the detective solved the mystery and took revenge on the bad guys who killed his buddy, but they haven't said at what age he dies and if his descendants one day reach mars, this is bullshit, book ruined." Here's a hint: the novels aren't actually about the fate of all humanity. They're usually about a handful of dudes out to survive the next battle and protect their bros, take revenge on a hated enemy, or maybe in a stretch win a war and free a planet or even save several planets from destruction. Nobody writes novels about the fate of the entire galaxy and all of humanity because it would be reaaaly hard for that to make sense short of it being told entirely through math and statistics or something since human experience is centered around individuals and not about the collective fates of billions of people. Even in a more realistic context, writing a novel covering a single conflict between two nation-states of maybe a few million on each side and covering maybe 4-8 years of fighting is insanely hard to do because even that paltry scale is extremely challenging to make relevant to people. Also, it's GW not WG.
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Nov 14, 2013 22:21
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VanSandman posted:You don't seem to understand. They have no interest whatsoever in advancing the narrative. Doing so would be detrimental to their business model. If you don't like it, sorry but that's just how it is. LOL. I understand. I understand WG has no interest in advancing the narrative. My point is it's boring. Got that?
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Nov 14, 2013 22:21
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Cream_Filling posted:A story arc is usually when things happen to characters and then characters make choices and interact. You know, individuals with names that do stuff and talk to each other. All of humanity everywhere isn't really a character. I guess it would be closure when we find out if humanity is eventually utterly destroyed or ascends into psychic super-beings, but somehow I think that would be kind of anticlimactic and end, well, the universe. There are also thing called meta story arcs, and yes, 40k has a meta story arc.
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Nov 14, 2013 22:22
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The Southern Dandy posted:There are also thing called meta story arcs, and yes, 40k has a meta story arc. No, it really doesn't. A single series of books may have a meta story arc, like the HH series or the Gaunt's Ghosts series, but assembling every random 40k book and saying they form a contiguous narrative is pretty ridiculous.
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Nov 14, 2013 22:25
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Cream_Filling posted:No, it really doesn't. A single series of books may have a meta story arc, like the HH series or the Gaunt's Ghosts series, but assembling every random 40k book and saying they form a contiguous narrative is pretty ridiculous. You don't think that all the novels/short stories/novellas of 40k contribute to an overall story arc?
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Nov 14, 2013 22:28
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The Southern Dandy posted:You don't think that all the novels/short stories/novellas of 40k contribute to an overall story arc? They absolutely don't. Again, you're confusing the connections and references used to tie different stories together as part of a shared brand and setting for an actual coherent narrative. Show me this narrative thread you think that connects a range of wildly different stories with different tones and styles.
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Nov 14, 2013 22:30
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Cream_Filling posted:They absolutely don't. Again, you're confusing the connections and references used to tie different stories together as part of a shared brand and setting for an actual coherent narrative. Emporer arises, does Grand Crusade, is crippled due to Heresy, lies on Golden Throne, other poo poo ensues. That's a story arc. Edit: I missed a Salty Bet due to this. The Southern Dandy fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Nov 14, 2013 |
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Nov 14, 2013 22:32
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