With Winnie-the-Pooh and The Battle of Hastings sharing an anniversary today, did you know that E. H. Shepard once drew this amazing scene for an exclusive book bag?
I love that none of them have weapons. Except Kanga, who has a fucking morningstar.
I love how bad Astarion is with his cover story. You meet him and he’s like “I’m a magistrate” then he stealths, disarms a trap, double dashes and backstabs a goblin all while giggling about spilling blood and you’re just like hm yeah that’s the legal system for you
THIS!
Not me out here loudly proclaiming to my partner “even if we didn’t know what he was already, who does this Anne Rice looking mother fucker think he’s fooling??”
I always find the “warhammer/40k is fascist propaganda”-discussion fascinating.
On one side there are acctual fascists seeing this horrible and depraved world and going: “Goals!”
On the other there are people saying its indeed fascist propaganda and glorifying its abuses. “Just look at the former group and how they act”
And im just sitting here in the corner going “its a cautionary tale, sometimes handled not very well since they have like 400 different authors and a lack of cohesion.
I’m being screamed at from both sides, and im starting to actually doubt my own reading and comprehension abilities, is satire truly dead? And am I beating its dead horse?
So I went and checked out the biggest BL authors twitter pages, its editors, game developers and lore experts too.
Pretty much every single one of them reblog or post about social issues, are anti-royalist and pro free healthcare and feminist issues. They genuinely seem like good guys, very unlike the “fans” in the first group.
I find is so bizarre that this discussion even exists when social media makes it so easy to reach out and just go “Hey, what are the allegory and moral behind this story?” and its author actually answers.
And still, people misconstrue things, claims it isn’t satire, and just make things up that aren’t there. When the truth is so easy to find with just a few minutes of research.
Absolutely this.
That inability to just check these points that are arguably more accessible than they’ve ever been? Confuses me. I think a lot of it is wilful ignorance, a refusal to learn more and experience any growth or development on the matter. That’s their stance and they’ll go all-in, ride or die on it. Though that’s hardly an uncommon approach elsewhere online…
What gives me hope is very few hobbyists I’ve met or interacted with are quite so set in their ways on the matter. They’re often some of the most welcoming and thoughtful people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. It pains me that’s not always the case for some people.
I think another big factor is something I saw someone say on Twitter a few years ago that’s always really stuck with me. Along the lines of “those people were always there being rude and generally unacceptable. But in the 90s they were that loner in the corner of the games store. Online, they can find one another and come across like a majority. They’re not, but it’s still not ok” or something to that effect.
There may be a very vocal, negative presence but it doesn’t necessarily mean their sentiments are echoed in a lot of IRL spaces and I dunno, that always just felt reassuring. That it’s OK to recognise the Warhammer universes aren’t aspirational but can still be enjoyed as cautionary, satirical or outright absurd settings.
I think there’s a whole lot of layers to the issue beyond this but yeah. A little media literacy and fact-checking goes a long way.
I'm Beau, a 33yr old artist, wannabe writer, cosplayer and overall dork in Australia. Making stuff, playing games, travelling, giant fighting robots and food are amongst my favourite things.
