ADB - B&C
It's clear this is a complicated issue, and there's a fair bit of projection and misunderstanding going on.
SpecialIssueAmmo, on 03 Sept 2017 - 05:24 AM, said:
A D-B, on 01 Sept 2017 - 5:18 PM, said:
EDIT: I should add, importantly, another reason unreliable narrators work so well is because of a key theme behind what 40K is. It's future history. It's always been envisioned and explained as fragmented stories being brought back from a past that just hasn't happened yet. Scholars and storytellers piecing it together, like a Dark Age, where truth is so corrupted by time and decay that nothing is absolute. (Another reason why 40K's canon never really existed. It's not accidental or to cover mistakes, it's the point of the setting's theme.)
Interested to know how the idea of '40k doesn't have canon' is still viable, when BL HH novels/Dark Imperium are clearly laying out in no vague terms so many secrets that once were just as mythical and shrouded to fans as they were to the characters in-universe.
We have stories telling the exact origin of Janus, what Vulkan's artifacts were, flat-out stating and showing that the Emperor bargained with Chaos to create the Primarchs, Custodes 'power levels' in relation to Astartes, let alone the entire Heresy arc itself etc. All of these were once unthinkable, wrapped in awe, myth and heresay, but are now seen as little more than a mundane extension of 40k.
How are these stories not contributing to a concrete 'canon'? Almost none of them take place with through an unreliable viewpoint or narrator, or raise more questions than answers. The universe is quite clearly being locked down under these objective events and narratives.
This is a difficult position to argue with, not because it's right, but because it's so narrow and you sound pretty hostile about it. You mention a small handful of previous mysteries that were, plainly and understandably, important to you as examples. And I'd agree with a lot of them. A lot of them are things I'd prefer to have remained unspoken and unknown. But information about those (and others!) doesn't mean the entire setting has suddenly gone on a shift towards absolute canon. I can give you a hundred more examples of things that have been explained or enlightened that were vague as hell 20+ years ago, but that doesn't mean everything is powering towards an immediate and final canon.
You're looking at individual trees there, and not seeing the forest.
Leif Bearclaw, on 03 Sept 2017 - 5:51 PM, said:
A D-B, on 01 Sept 2017 - 5:18 PM, said:
And what Tuomas is referring to with the older Dark Elf book is the same thing. It's in-character, and it's wet. Forge World's HHbooks do the same - Alan went with a staggeringly unreliable narrator.
That actually presents a problem imo. The older Fantasy stuff is the best example because it's so obvious the narrator is an unreliable, partisan cheerleader for the book's faction.
Oh, I wouldn't argue with that. Like I said, it's why I like first-person books, and why my third-person books are so vague with answers. My Night Lords all completely disagreed on what the Legion's glory days ever were, each character seeing a completely different Legion in the past, with completely different values. You don't come out of those novels knowing what the Night Lords were, but what those characters believe the Legion was. (Which is, well, the point.) And for all of the revelations in something like TMoM, there are countless more questions left unanswered. So we know that Custodians are a bit tougher than Space Marines now. Wow. Amazing. Who cares. What does that mean, compared to the actual myths and legends of the setting? Not a damn thing.
KingHongKong, on 03 Sept 2017 - 9:34 PM, said:
A D-B, on 01 Sept 2017 - 5:18 PM, said:
EDIT: I should add, importantly, another reason unreliable narrators work so well is because of a key theme behind what 40K is. It's future history. It's always been envisioned and explained as fragmented stories being brought back from a past that just hasn't happened yet. Scholars and storytellers piecing it together, like a Dark Age, where truth is so corrupted by time and decay that nothing is absolute. (Another reason why 40K's canon never really existed. It's not accidental or to cover mistakes, it's the point of the setting's theme.)
No offense intended to Aaron, but this is one of the more major reasons why I don't particularly care for 40k fluff anymore.
There's no way that would offend me. It's not my decision, or anything related to me. Nor is it new. It's not something that's just started happening. The 40K universe has always been treated this way by its creators, so if there's something you don't like lately, this probably isn't its source. Nothing's changed in terms of what you're referring to. The quote from Marc Gascoigne below is, like, ten years old. And he was talking about how things were always done.
Trevak Dal, on 04 Sept 2017 - 12:23 AM, said:
Huh so that would mean that the lore is stuff being looked at hundreds or even thousands of years later? The wars long having been decided, whether Terra still stands or has been abandoned, if some humans still live, if the galaxy banded together to resist the Tyranids or if they were that much of a threat.
Sort of like Star Trek. Most episodes are portrayed as logs, played back by a viewer, or literally a holodeck replay shown in Enterprise, and also how Star Wars happened long ago far away.
Interesting to say the least.
Not exactly. That's applying structure to something that's just a vibe. It's treated as a future history. Not a history, looked back on from the future. To quote Marc Gascoigne:
"Keep in mind Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 are worlds where half truths, lies, propaganda, politics, legends and myths exist. The absolute truth which is implied when you talk about "canonical background" will never be known because of this. Everything we know about these worlds is from the viewpoints of people in them which are as a result incomplete and even sometimes incorrect. The truth is mutable, debatable and lost as the victors write the history...
Here's our standard line: Yes it's all official, but remember that we're reporting back from a time where stories aren't always true, or at least 100% accurate. if it has the 40K logo on it, it exists in the 40K universe. Or it was a legend that may well have happened. Or a rumour that may or may not have any truth behind it.
Let's put it another way: anything with a 40K logo on it is as official as any Codex... and at least as crammed full of rumours, distorted legends and half-truths."
Edited by A D-B, 04 September 2017 - 10:04 AM.
