You Guys Do Know You're Supposed To Reblog Things, Right

I am not a straight people.

Reblog if you are also not a straight people.

People write million word books on there, and people write 100 word shitposts (I think the proper word is "drabbles" but I've got no idea). I personally find its tagging system very useful, since it's got the ability to filter tags both in and out, though I'm not sure how much of that is my own technological ineptness.

Last bit on nonsense for now. No more noise until next weekend.

AO3.

Yes or no?

I don't have an account. I find the idea of it intimidating.

People write book length pieces of fiction. Multiple chapters. Ships. I don't even ship canon love interests, never mind fictional ones.

I'm just a needy little Internet goblin who lives in a hole called Tumblr. Occasionally, I shout into the void.

But what if that one silly story gets a little attention? What if it flies?

I'm going to bed. Something for next weekend.

Fulgrim's fall wasn't from the Imperium to Chaos.

It was from "It is your duty to raise them up, as high as they will go. Anything less is not worthy of you" to "What we have won is already being given away to imperfect mortals who will waste the glories we won for them".

A proper response to the Templin Institute's female Space Marines video

Since shitposts and shower thoughts aren't exactly effective forms of media discourse.

About two years ago, the Templin Institute made a video discussing why female Space Marines exist in warhammer 40k. Two weeks ago I decided to rewatch it to see if it was as bad as I remembered or if I was just going through a reactionary anti-woke phase. You can find the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZatVIVggl0

Boy, was I disappointed. It was like they took an anti-woke grifter, forced them to write an essay about why female Space Marines should exist, and then edited out all the reactionary bigotry. Hell, the title sounds like it's going to be bitching about "how dare women exist in my exclusively male hobby" and how "the woke mob is ruining warhammer!". Though, the title might be intentional, to get antiwokers to click on a video that challenges their views. Like something an anti-woke grifter would produce, the core argument of the video is rooted in a flawed premise, and it implies a degree of ill intent in those who disagree.

The core of the Templin Institute's argument is a re-interpretation of a line of thought that I have seen quite often in anti-woke arguments: Warhammer 40k lore has not changed. Now this might not sound right. In the video they mention multiple instances of old lore that newer lore has contradicted, from chaos androids to mortal general Horus. But while they do acknowledge that these instances of older lore do exist in contradiction to newer lore, they fail to acknowledge that the old lore is no longer canon. Where the antiwoker says "nothing has been added to Warhammer 40k lore", Templin says "nothing has been removed from Warhammer 40k lore". The lore no longer says that the Chaos Androids were a thing, it no longer says that the Horus Heresy lasted seven days and seven nights, it no longer says that Horus was but a mortal general who served the Emperor, and a headcanon that involved those would very much go against canon. Knowledge of the Imperium's history did not change in light of new evidence--the history itself changed. New information was not discovered, nor was old information repressed. Canon, "reality" from the point of view of Warhammer 40k, was what changed, not what people knew about it.

I don't have a problem with people having a headcanon that contradicts official canon--before they were added in officially last April, I had my own headcanon that there were, in fact, female members of the Adeptus Custodes, despite canon saying otherwise. Hell, this is what homebrew armies are. Some people might try to keep some veneer of canon-compliance with their homebrew, but we all are aware that it's ultimately fanfiction. Our homebrew isn't canon, and that's okay. (and if someone shows me a painted mini of a female space marine, my reaction is going to be about the same as it would be to a space marine of a homebrew chapter, and the reaction I'd hope to get from someone I showed a mini from my own homebrew chapter--"that's a cool mini, nice paint job painting it".)

What I have a problem with is presenting it as an equal interpretation to the lore as a headcanon that does not contradict official canon. Before the 10th edition codex released, my headcanon about female Custodes was not my interpretation of what the lore says about the gender of the Custodes. It was certainly colored by my interpretation of other parts of the lore, but it was ultimately me taking canon information and saying "no, I think this is cooler". If, before the retcon, I told someone about that headcanon, they would have had every right to tell me that what I believed wasn't canon, just as now I have every right to tell someone claiming that female Custodes are some foul Tzeentchian plot to corrupt the Imperium that it isn't canon.

Another issue with the video is how its logic is so Imperium-centric. Yes, everyone may have their own interests in how much of the truth they tell you, but not everyone has those same interests. If every book and game was from the point of view of the Imperium, then their argument might hold more water. As it stands, however, that is not the case. What interest might say, the Necrons, have in pretending that the Space Marines are exclusively male? What about the T'au or the Eldar? The Necrons and Eldar especially would not be upholding the Imperium's narrative. Both were around, even if only in small numbers, for the entirety of the Imperium's history, and would more than likely know if the Space Marines were mixed-gender. The Imperium of Man is quite obviously steeped in superstition and high off its own propaganda, but when the Imperium, Eldar, T'au, and Necrons are all saying the same thing, I'd wager that the Imperium is probably telling the truth.

At the end of the video, the Templin Institute says this:

"Let's make a deal. If you decide to argue with me in the comments, include the following phrase somewhere in your argument: 'you will die as your weakling father died'. You will get the satisfaction of tearing me down with a badass line, and I and everyone else, at the very least, will know that you watched this entire video, were open to what you had to say, and that your argument is being made in good faith".

This has this undertone of hostility to it, which makes me doubt how much they are really arguing in good faith. I do not believe it is normal to take satisfaction in "tear(ing) (your opponents) down with a badass line" in debates, and it feels very much like the kind of thing someone does when they no longer have any real arguments to make. It almost implies that, if you want to argue with them, you don't have any real arguments and must resort to insults and badass quotes to cover for it. Granted, given how many of the comments went, they weren't that far off (frankly the anti-wokers are more cringe than Templin was here, but I don't think I need to write an essay about why that is), but it still feels like it was done in bad faith.

Lastly, I want to discuss the comment they made, about ten months ago: "Well, well well, look who was completely right". This was (almost certainly) made in response to the female custodes retcon back when the 10th edition codex dropped. They are, quite ironically, misinterpreting Games Workshops tweet "since the first of the Ten Thousand were created, there have always been female Custodians" the same way all of the people screaming "gaslighting" about it are--as a statement about the real world. The simple fact is that no, Games Workshop wasn't talking about the real world. The lore used to say that there are no female Custodians, and now it says that there have been female Custodians since the Unification Wars. This isn't proof for the Templin Institute's arguments any more than M'shen was vindication for Konrad Curze (no, Big E sending an assassin to kill him for turning traitor was not proof that he was in the right to skin people alive for the slightest misdemeanor).

I don't hate the Templin Institute, and I think people who hate them for wanting female Space Marines are childish at best. But that video stands as a black mark on their record.

I imagine most of the OCs of a Chaos fan (and there's more than a few of those) would be heretics, and that most of the OCs of a Xenos fan, would in fact be xenos. You just need to find your crowd.

I mean, I'm an Imperium fan and I'm working on a Chaos OC (more a warband of them, since my main focus in this fandom is the game).

Stray thought. Is everyone's 40k oc a loyalist?

I've seen space marines, primarchs, sisters of battle, rogue traders, and so on. They all seem to be loyal to the imperium.

Have I isolated myself by creating a character who isn't a loyalist? Who is, in fact, a heretic?

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. I've reloaded the gun and shot the other foot as well!

We also see the Eldar fighting Emperor's Children on the codex cover that was released.

The unexpected 3rd party will be, of course, Trazyn the Infinite.

Given Fulgrim's absolute OBSESSION with swords and especially those that come with weird gimmics and magics attached to them, how high are the chances that he has the final Eldaer Cronesword in his arsenal? The one supposedly inside Slaanesh's palace and utterly unreachable?

Will this be how the Ynnari will suddenly be relevant again? All because Fulgrim had negative impulse control and also annoyed Slaanesh for 10,000 years to get that one special sword they keep locked away for good reason as it involves their self-preservation?

As we are due for a Drukhari update this edition the story part of it might feature the Ynnari just to dunk on the Emperor's Children after their release (the same way Angron got dunked on in Arks of Omen after he had a chance to wreck shop).

Oh I can see it already: They showed off that new Warp Spiders Phoenix Lord lady - that one will get an story of breaching into the divine palace, and realizing "wait, THE SWORD IS NOT HERE?!" which then coincides with Fulgrim's return to realspace wielding that blade. The Ynnari see it is "all or nothing" now and pull their connections and strings in the Dark City, the Craftworlds, the Harequins, and of course the Ultramarines (this is still GW writing, so Rotate Girlboss is here as well) to just throw a giant force at Fulgrim.

As this is a typical 40k storyline an unexpected 3rd party will obviously gank that fight for their own gain and turn every plan upside down, but up until that point we have a pretty solid framework I'd say.

Scythes of the Emperor fight for Democracy?

Astartes II

Most relatable post about creative writing I've ever seen.

It's not an exercise in creativity; I'm doing that constantly. It's an exercise in taking that creativity and setting it in stone, putting it on a medium that can be shared.

Me @ writers: you just make that shit up from your brain???

Memes about my homebrew chapter

The Emerald Wings

As much as I do go on about how the Emperor's Children are a bunch of femboys, there is far more to them than that.

People tend to forget (in part due to how Slaanesh has been reduced to a sex addict) that the reason they fell in the first place was their obsession with being the best of the best. All the illicit experimentation began with that goal in mind.

They (and Fulgrim) wanted to be the best, and that blinded them to how good they actually were.

I swear, if I hear *one more person* simplify fulgrim to just "yassss queen slay" I am going to break something. He's such an interesting, tragic and relatable character and I wish people didn't simplify him to "haha pretty boy".