Behind the Brush

A common form for lore - fictions or fanworks or etc - to take, in the 40k fandom, is what people refer to as "bolter porn". This is fairly lavacious descriptions of sci fi action scenes. Lavish descriptions of bodies torn apart as the muzzle flash of bolt guns firing into them shed a near erotical light on the whole scene. To a certain extent, I get it: this is a war game, presumably people interested in it are interested in depictions of combat. It seems about as safe a presumption of common interest as the writers can make. The problem is that it is almost always incredibly boring.

This is certainly not because I am uninterested in science fiction action! I often tell people I think the trench run sequence of A New Hope is just about perfect cinema. Starship Troopers, Aliens, Terminators 1 & 2, and Predator, all rank among my favourite films. And it is not even just when visually displayed. The battle of Yonkers in the book version of World War Z is, I think, masterfully done stuff. As is the Thunderchild's engagement in War of the Worlds. And later in this post I will be able to name some examples of 40k bolter porn done well. But despite my appreciation of the genre there is no denying that the vast majority of what I read in 40k fiction is just incredibly dull. I genuinely find myself just skipping sections rather than have to put up with 10 more paragraphs of "And then Honour Capitain Bigus Dickus bravely shot a gun that went pew pew in a manly way, the lithe eldar bodies exploding around him in a shower of not-semen." I get it. So short reflections here on what makes this work well and why it usually falls flat.

Obviously part of the issue is just that most writing is bad. That's just the way of things. Most of everything is bad. Everything I do is bad, so I can hardly cast any stones here. So it goes. I do think there are issues even on top of that.

Related to the above there are also certain obvious rules of good writing that are all too frequently violated. Why, after all, do Predator or Aliens or cetera work so well? In very large part because you are attached to the characters and their situation. I often say that the lightsaber duel between Vader and Luke in Return of the Jedi is my favourite lightsaber fight in the entire Star Wars franchise. (Yes yes the hallway scene in Rogue One and the duel of the fates in Phantom Menace are also good.) Clearly it is not the most acrobatic or visually exciting, far from it. But the moment it represents -- seeing how for all Luke's training and development to this point Vader is still able to near effortlessly tear him down -- is powerful, the characters and their struggle and the narrative revelation it represents have all come together to make this more than just swords clashing. Think of Inyigo Montoya's last duel in Princess Bride! Or - and I can't believe I am saying this - Puss in Boots' final duel with the Wolf in his recent film. (Those examples might give the impression this takes a lot of work to build up but I do not think so: via some quite simple expedients both duels in The Buried Giant feel impactful, despite the characters only recently having been introduced in the first case.) All too often the 40k books fail to do this basic thing, actually make me care about the situation before throwing me into it.

I can actually think of an example of combat in 40k verse done well with this in mind. Towards the end of Valdor (mentioned below! Some spoilers following) we see one of the disaffected former soldiers of the unification wars step up to battle a newly unleashed Astartes. For obvious reasons things do not go well for him. But the brief exchange feels meaningful because you have come to understand him and his perspective up to this moment, and it even feels somewhat glorious that he should manage what he does in his futile raging against the light's fading. Likewise the last thunder-warrior's duel with Valdor himself. That book in general was much better written than is typical in these cases so perhaps it is not to be found surprising.

But while that can be interesting I feel as if the main use of combat in written media has to be setting establishing. The Battle of Yonkers contains relatively little description of, like, actual combat. But it doesn't need to in order to be thrilling. Because by telling us how the government was trying and failing to contain the crisis we are learning very important things about the setting. You see the tragedy not just as a local disaster but as the true herald of catastrophe that it is meant to be. We learn about mindsets and come to see consequences as inevitable and those are what really sustain our interest, the combat is just one means among many to do this. (It has points in common with well written sex scenes here. Of course the erotic thrill may be reward enough, but even where that is not really the focus if done well they can still be worth the read for what they tell us.) If your setting is worth learning about at all then this can be an exciting way to do that.

All too rarely this is a virtue which good 40k books manage to attain. Once again the Valdor book manages this with the doomed former soldier's recollections of first seeing a Custodian do battle. I reproduce a quote here:

Of course tastes vary and maybe the full context is needed to appreciate it, but for me this worked well. And it worked despite the fact that you get very minimal description of any actual fighting. But you don't need to, learning about Achilla's emotional reaction to what he saw, knowing as the scene emphasises that it is not as if this is a sentimental man, tells you more interesting information than any detailed blow-by-blow would. (There is a moment in Unremembered Empire wherein you see Guilleman respond to an ambush that does something similar - we get a description of the combat, but what makes it actually interesting is learning about how he thinks about the situation. There is also a haunting descent into madness rendered quasi-literal a la Heart of Darkness in the sequence wherein the protagonist fights his way back into his old home in Twice Dead King.) Good descriptions of combat can be just as character establishing and world building as descriptions of combat or conversation or architecture.

So anyway those are my somewhat basic thoughts. Of course the basics of good writing need to be in place for fight scenes to work, and all too often isn't. And yes work needs to be done to make us actually care about the people and situation at issue, and all too often isn't. But most of all I think what makes written combat interesting is that it tells us something about the setting or people therein, we actually learn something. The combat is a medium for more than just the thrill of a well described action-packed sequence of events. All too often bolter porn doesn't tell me anything I didn't already know, it feels all too much like pure filler, like the writer is being paid per word. Ironic that this should be my final complaint, given the length of this very post!

So I just finished reading Warhawk and I really liked it. In particular I found the characterisation of Khan fascinating. Two things I particularly liked about it:

1.The contrast between his outward demeanour and what we see of him when he is talking to close confidants or thinking to himself. Outsiders to the legion consistently treat the Chogorians as backwards and savages. Conversations are hampered by a language barrier, and even given that the Khan is often taciturn or brusk. But the book gives us access to his more private moments and he's actually introspective and wise, he thinks seriously about the nature of war and what martial valour must be to be separate from bloodlust, what it is they are fighting for, and even the metaphysics of the world around him. He uses the reputation for savagery strategically (e.g. to extort the Martians into building him better ships) but ultimately you get the impression of a very cultured and even somewhat jovial man.

2. He is very clear eyed about the Imperium and the Emperor. Much of the book is about ideological fights re the Imperial Truth and its role in the Great Crusade. You get the impression that Jaghatai signed up only because he realised resistance was futile and is always ultimately concerned to preserve Chogorian culture, that he foresaw the problem with trying to impose the Imperial Truth given that it was false and demonstrably so, and that he was perfectly willing to take the Chogorians and cut and run from the Imperium if it looked like they were going to try to seriously impose Terran rule upon them. Too often otherwise intelligent characters seem to just buy into the whole definitely-not-a-God-emperor-but-also-you-have-to-kill-anyone-who-defies-me-and-conquer-the-galaxy-in-my-name thing far far far too easily. So I enjoyed this.

But the most interesting aspect of the book to me is you get the sense that Chogoris had a cultural tradition of dealing with the warp but not-going-too-far that had allowed them to avoid the worst problems of Old Night while still allowing them to deploy Stormseers very effectively. But because they have a reputation as unsophisticated (the contrast is made with both the highly refined Blood Angels and also... just... Magnus) nobody takes them seriously when they try to push for their ways to be adopted. So even though I like characteristics 1 and 2 it means there is still something tragic and flawed about him. The tool he uses to keep himself distant from the Imperium and protect Chogoris from Terran domination is ultimately what stops him from being an effective ambassador on the key issue which ended up damning the whole enterprise.

So you end up with a cool character whose virtues are intertwined with vices in such a way that his enterprise is ultimately doomed. You see how you end up with 30k turning into 40k, but without having to give Jaghatai the idiotball or the magic artefact of badthink, instead making his mistakes understandable. Wish we got more like this!

The central conflict I should like to exist is a sort of three way split, though in various ways I both simplify and complicate it. The broad idea is that the central society of the setting I am building - the system of Kilobo - has one group opposing it for its virtues, and another opposing it as a reflection of its vices. Let me explain.

A traditional aspect of the Imperium I have not really leaned into, deciding to make my little guys outliers thereto, is its hatred and opposition to progress. For two reasons I didn't want to lean into that. One relates to the tabletop; I like the look and feel of the Elysian drop troops. My sense is they are a bit of an outlier from the general feel of the universe, because they are trying to capture the ODST style future-warrior look from other franchises. So since that is what I was going to be collecting I wanted the culture that produced them to reflect the way they were depicted by the models. The other relates to other elements of the worldview I wanted to go for here -- I sort of had in mind neo-Calvinist takes on the Imperial faith to play against the Space Catholicism look of the Imperium in general. And, well, what do Space Calvinists do with those hands to prevent them being idle and thus ideal for Horus to make play with? They work! They save and reinvest! They do all that so they can work some more! How else can they be sure they rest in the Emperor's favour? So it seemed to me a little bit odd and off theme to have them go fully embrace the anti-progress ethos of much of the rest of the imperium.

But at the same time I thought it would be totally out of whack for them to just get off scott free for casually violating this core element of the setting. So instead I decided to make their virtue a vice by having it play into a sort of eternal cold war with the Mechanicus. Now clearly for this to work it can't ever become a hot war (if I don't make it such that the Mechanicus would just crush my little guys then I have created a Mary-Sue faction) so shenanigans are then required to explain why it never becomes a hot war. How well I met the challenge is for yinz to judge. If I pulled it off it means I get to play one of my favourite antagonist factions, those wacky cyborg hypernerd war crimes boys, off as a fairly natural foil for the chaps I collect.

The other side is meant to reflect the more serious vices of the Kilobians. As mentioned below, I am interested in the idea of a society horrific not because the Imperium's worst faults are thrust upon them and they're all ground into the dust, but because they reflectively endorse them. One of those elements, I take it, is brutally subjugating anyone who is a bit different with utter self-confidence that one is righteous in so doing. To this end I created the space ghetto of Kurow Dunwɔtwe in which let loose all the punitive instincts of a superstitious and morally smug people. So how then would that be opposed? I guess the natural reaction would be for the people of Kurow Dunwɔtwe to contrast themselves with Kilobo - to be traditionalist where Kilobians are progressive, to embrace psychers where Kilobians reject them, to be libertine where Kilobians are puritanical, and so on. And when I thought about what this might look like in the 40K universe I realised that it was a sort of mix of some of the Mechanicus elements I had already used above, and some of the things which characterise chaos in its struggle against the Imperium.

Hence arriving at the figure of the chaotic, Slaaneshi with a bit of Tzeentchian sorcery thrown in, dark Mechanicus aligned antagonists.

If you didn't watch it when I was out I highly recommend Arcane. It was very good. Here's something that I took away from it that I would like to recreate.

One of the core plot threads of Arcane follows the political shenanigans of various squabbling Higher Ups in the central location of the show, Piltover. But most of the rest of the show focuses on the strivings and aspirations of people from the under-city, an oppressed and poverty striken district neighbouring and governed by Piltover. What this allows for is something that I found very powerful: the under-city characters are obsessed with, absolutely constantly thinking about and planning around, Piltover and how it relates to them. But the Piltover political leaders? They barely care. For them it's just Tuesday. Don't get me wrong, they do sometimes discuss the under-city. But their entire framework for this is seeing them as a security threat to be contained; none of the dramas and dreams we see play out among the central caste register as anything worth caring about.

As a way of depicting oppression I found this wonderful. The people of Piltover aren't even malicious - they just don't care. They got their own thing going on, the under-city just doesn't come up in their daily lives that much, and when it does its just as a source of crime or terrorism. Nothing in their world prompts them to think about it more than this so they just kinda don't. In that way you have this wonderful city of normal, often even kind, people filled with advanced technology and strong capacity to do good existing side by side with squalor and misery; and it scarce occurs to anyone that it might be another way. (Now events of course transpire to shake this situation up but... watch the show!)

This to me is a kind of profound GrimDark, a situation that isn't hopeless but makes you lose hope in humanity precisely because despite that nothing actually gets better. It's what I want to go for in the relationship between Kilobo and Kurow Dunwɔtwe.

Just finished the above named book and it's amazing. Genuinely a higher quality of writing than I thought possible from a Warhammer book.It manages something many fail to achieve - without making Valdor and his cause unsympathetic, it doesn't make the imperium "the good guys" either. It's a more tragic tale on GrimDark and I absolutely love it.Showing that it achieves GW's real purpose it even made me sympathetic to collecting Custodes! The characterisation they receive here is fascinating and deep.

Anyway if you're the kind of person who enjoys this forum and haven't already read it I can't recommend more.

After some difficult times over the holiday I am finally back to doing what I care about. Writing weird lore! I will say that the Warhammer 40k community has been very welcoming and fun community to me. I have had lovely chats about lore and the game on Reddit, and there is a WhatsApp group for people who play in my area that is nothing but good natured fun. Needless to say when I meet up with people it has been lovely too. It makes it all the more puzzling that 40k on Twitter is so contentious and sometimes, like, a bit Nazi? Something a bit off in how Twitter cultivates communities methinks.

Boo!