Inexplicably popular books.

[Marik2]

Lets see here:

For Manga:

Love Hina: While Tenchi Muyo was my first Harem Anime, it did alot of things right, like haveing a protagonist that could do awsome moments and not be a the world's greatest punching bag. Love hina is a cavalcade of abuse that makes me wonder how this guy could survive and how small his spine is. I played against Goblins armies in Warhammer and 40K, and they were less cowardly and they were bloody goblins. Yes there is fanservice galor, but I've seen better with better reasons to want to hook up with the guy in Air Gear.

Books: Catcher In the Rye: I get why its considered important for literature, but at the same time this is a book done from the perspective of a whiny emo hipster you want to strangle with their own pretentiousness. There are maybe three or four fictional characters that made me want to do that, and this was one of them.

Love Hina is popular because it just had really varied and likeable female characters in a time where there wasn't as much variety, not because people liked the protagonist lmao. Akamatsu Ken is one of the better known romance/harem mangaka out there due to his ahead-of-the-curve tendency to capture cuteness and adorableness in his female characters in new and imaginative ways. Also, the second to last volume of LH is prolly the funniest manga I've ever read, not sure if you've gotten that far into the story, but that part where everyone's chasing the protagonist trying to marry him is just consistently knee-slapping fun.


Oh and don't look down on goblins if you know what's good for your womenfolk. *GS flashbacks*

Most of the girls/women aren't likeable nor funny. When you most of your girls an obnoxious level of dick, *****, pussy, or asshole (with Naru being the combination of all 4) they ain't sympathetic, likeable, or funny. I hate the double standard female on male abuse is funny (This means you too Kagome Higarashi & Anna Kyoyama). The manga industry definitely had a problem with this. Just because it's a comdey does not make it okay or good. Naru is one of the worst "love" interests in anime/manga history and no man or woman in their right mind would stik around in relationship with that *****. She is the worst tsundere and lead to over a 1000 of imitators either being the same or worse with little to no justification. All of the women Tenchi, even Ryoko, are nicer than her and most of the main female case. At least they cared and respected Tenchi. Most of the women in Love Hina don't, or Keitaro has to go through their absurd, pathetic standards. The only good thin you can say now is that Love Hina is not fondly remembered now (more so fans and non-fans from the West). Probably from people realizing that women can be abusive assholes to men, and are not to be sympathetic just because they're the opposite gender.

Motoko was best girl in love hina. She was practically the only one who got character development. Love Hina was decent for its time and was the best marketed harem manga. I could never get into Tenchi Muyo cuz the character design never got my attention.

You see, even for its time, I did not think the manga was decent. the only reason other people were starting to realize this was around 2012 or 2013. Long after the longer the hair wrapped up in all the height finally died down. I was unimpressed by the character design for Love Hina. Motoko I barely ever cared for. Even if she got the most developing out of all the girls. I'm okay with you not being interested in the character designs for Tenchi. I find the characters much more interesting in the Tenchi series than the Love Hina series. That goes for the original Tenchi, Universe (the first AU), & even Tenchi in Tokyo (the second AU lot of fans don't like). I just know a lot of harems became less interesting after Love Hina had just finished up.

The only harem mangas that were interesting to me were Negima, Sekirei, Rosario Vampire, and Date a Live. All of theme have a sub par anime that didn't do the source material justice.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I think if I look hard enough I can *get* what's appealing of any book, even if it's not to me. Like I *get* the appeal of comic books, Star Wars merch, romance novels and all the YA crap.

Books: Catcher In the Rye: I get why its considered important for literature, but at the same time this is a book done from the perspective of a whiny emo hipster you want to strangle with their own pretentiousness. There are maybe three or four fictional characters that made me want to do that, and this was one of them.

I don't think Holden's whiny. He's opinionated, which probably looks whiny to the people he meets and can't stand him. I wouldn't qualify him as emo or hipster either. First because those are subcultures that spawned long after Salinger came back from the war and wrote the book. Second because they don't really apply anyway. You might as well call him by any other subculture, even the historically appropriate ones (like beatnik), if it boils down to him being a social outcast. And unlike emos and hipsters Holden is truly alone, nor does he live by any specific dogma (which I think is what grates on so many people, considering he criticizes everybody else's).

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

I think if I look hard enough I can *get* what's appealing of any book, even if it's not to me. Like I *get* the appeal of comic books, Star Wars merch, romance novels and all the YA crap.

Books: Catcher In the Rye: I get why its considered important for literature, but at the same time this is a book done from the perspective of a whiny emo hipster you want to strangle with their own pretentiousness. There are maybe three or four fictional characters that made me want to do that, and this was one of them.

I don't think Holden's whiny. He's opinionated, which probably looks whiny to the people he meets and can't stand him. I wouldn't qualify him as emo or hipster either. First because those are subcultures that spawned long after Salinger came back from the war and wrote the book. Second because they don't really apply anyway. You might as well call him by any other subculture, even the historically appropriate ones (like beatnik), if it boils down to him being a social outcast. And unlike emos and hipsters Holden is truly alone, nor does he live by any specific dogma (which I think is what grates on so many people, considering he criticizes everybody else's).

Yeah he?s just an unpleasant, mouthy arsehole. I did not enjoy this book at all, and since I read it of my own volition I feel pretty confident that opinion won?t change.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I don't think Fallout and 40K are the best comparisons in this case. Fallout is people conciously trying to recreate the pre-war world. 40K is cultures developing in isolation per their environment.

Gethsemani is probably correct here. However, even if we think about this from a purely in-universe perspective of only caring about narrative consistency, then the fact remains that it doesn't make sense. It doesn't even really make sense that people in Fallout know or care much about the pre-war world. It's gone. It's been gone for a really long time. In 40k, that length of time is so unimaginable that there is basically no possibility of any person even knowing who the norse were or any of scandinavian culture surviving.

And yet, the inhabitants of Fenris aren't just a bit like the norse. They are the norse. The planet itself is named after a figure from norse mythology. They use norse words and names. Their religion is based on norse religion. This is not just adapting to similar conditions, it is two almost identical cultures emerging tens of thousands of years apart despite there being no relationship between them.

To break that in-universe stance for a moment. Way back in Fallout 1, there were no LARPers. Every society and settlement you encountered in Fallout 1 was something new, even if it was built on something pre-war. Even in Fallout 2, other than the Shi and the gangsters of New Reno, most people were still building new things rather than mindlessly adhering to old stereotypes. If Bethesda had written Fallout 2, everyone in NCR would have been a surfer because hey, California in the 50s guys! Surfing! Beach parties! But there's no reason for anyone in this universe to behave that way, just like there's no reason for anyone in 40k to be a viking.

 

[Hawki]

You and Evilthecat are coming at this from two different perspectives. You are arguing a Watsonian perspective, how things came to be within the lore. Evilthecat is looking at the Doylist perspective, why the writer wrote things a certain way.

Is the latter even a question?

Why did the 40K writers use cultural archtypes? Familiarity? Ease of development? Porting over from Fantasy Battle and things slip through (hence, space elves and space orcs/orks?) Point is, it's academic as to "why," least in the context of the actual conversation. As to why Interplay chose 1950s retrofuturism for Fallout, no idea.

His point is that the writers of Fallout and 40k want a particular world state and don't really care to justify that world state in any way. Your counter point is to argue that it can totally be interpreted from the meager lore we're given.

Justification for the state of a fictional setting can only come from a fictional setting itself, or in some occasions, "word of God" on the nature of the setting itself. I'm not sure how this is Watsonian vs. Doylist because the latter can only inform as to why the writers chose to make things the way they were. It can't answer how they are the way they are based on in-universe criteria, unless one goes down the path of Fallout not making sense because we know that mutation doesn't turn people into ghouls, and that the 50s actually ended in the 50s and whatnot. If the question is whether the nature of a fictional world makes sense, then it can only be evaluated by its own criteria, or real-world science. And since Fallout and 40K both follow their own versions of science, then I'm not sure how that view has much weight. It's the equivalent of writing off Lord of the Rings on the basis that we know for a fact that Earth in the distant past was most certainly not inhabited by elves and orcs and everything else.

You are not arguing on the same premise or even about the same thing. Evil talks about the intention of the writer, you talk about the in universe explanations.

Not sure where the intention of the writer was brought up exactly. Then again, the writer's intention is academic as to whether things function or not.

It doesn't even really make sense that people in Fallout know or care much about the pre-war world. It's gone. It's been gone for a really long time.

Really?

Look, I can't comment on Fallout in the same way as 40K (as in, knowledge of the latter greatly exceeds the former), but wouldn't interest in the old world be expected? I mean, by Fallout 4, over 200 years have passed since the bombs fell, and in Fallout 1, IIRC, 60 years. People in the real world are still fascinated by civilizations removed from us by thousands of years. Plus, we have a setting where there's no longer the same ease of access, since you can't really be an archeologist without also knowing how to handle yourself. I'd also expect that if you're living in the ruins of a former civilization, still unable to rise to meet that civilization, and being told (I assume?) how great things were in that civilization (cars, houses, etc.), that you'd be interested in it.

To break that in-universe stance for a moment. Way back in Fallout 1, there were no LARPers. Every society and settlement you encountered in Fallout 1 was something new, even if it was built on something pre-war. Even in Fallout 2, other than the Shi and the gangsters of New Reno, most people were still building new things rather than mindlessly adhering to old stereotypes. If Bethesda had written Fallout 2, everyone in NCR would have been a surfer because hey, California in the 50s guys! Surfing! Beach parties! But there's no reason for anyone in this universe to behave that way, just like there's no reason for anyone in 40k to be a viking.

I can't comment on any LARP factor too much though, since in terms of direct exposure to Fallout, I've only played some of Fallout 3 and that's it. I don't really see too much of a problem with it in terms of principle, but since you conspicuously mention only the pre-Bethesda games, well...

In 40k, that length of time is so unimaginable that there is basically no possibility of any person even knowing who the norse were or any of scandinavian culture surviving.

And yet, the inhabitants of Fenris aren't just a bit like the norse. They are the norse. The planet itself is named after a figure from norse mythology. They use norse words and names. Their religion is based on norse religion. This is not just adapting to similar conditions, it is two almost identical cultures emerging tens of thousands of years apart despite there being no relationship between them.

Something to keep in mind in 40K is that the language humans used is effectively 'dubbed.' High Gothic is written as Latin, Low Gothic is written as English, Wurgen and Juvik take inspiration from Norse languages, but none of these languages are literally real-world ones. So Fenris being called "Fenris" is less (from the in-universe perspective) being named after the Norse wolf deity, and more being translated. And likewise, religion - yes, Norse mythology is the obvious parallel, but it's not like they're literally worshipping the Norse deities, and they've got the Imperial flavor of the Emperor and Leman Russ woven in.

If I might be so bold, I don't think the issue at hand is as to how Fenris (or whatever world) came to be the way it is, it's whether it passes the litmus test. I can say it personally does, because:

*There's a million human worlds in the setting
*Those worlds developed in isolation for thousands of years
*Tellingly, cultures on those worlds are suited to those worlds (i.e. we don't have Norse Vikings on Catachan, or Vietcong on Fenris)
*It's concievable that those cultures bear resemblance to those of Terra because of the above points, further bearing in mind that this is a setting where humans can regress, and regress hard at that

If you want to ask why things are the way they are from a Doylist perspective, I've already answered it, but whether that choice is justified in-universe can only come from the universe itself. It's why the worldbuilding of 40K is above, say, Prisoner Zero, which as "not!Africa planet" and "not!Japan planet," among other things, in that the former has justification for it, the latter doesn't (inference aside).

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Is the latter even a question?

Why did the 40K writers use cultural archtypes? Familiarity? Ease of development? Porting over from Fantasy Battle and things slip through (hence, space elves and space orcs/orks?) Point is, it's academic as to "why," least in the context of the actual conversation. As to why Interplay chose 1950s retrofuturism for Fallout, no idea.

It is hardly academic, at most it might be inconsequential. However, the Doylist perspective is incredibly important, because it answers a lot of things about why works of media or art are the way they are. For 40k, for example, it is not hard to point to its roots as incredibly pulp satire. That and its overt intentions to create a striking miniature wargame, which meant that drawing on distinct human cultures or stereotypes was an easy way to create different armies and model lines, which boosted sales.

Why are the Grey Wolves Space Vikings? Because Vikings are cool and they are visually distinct from other space marines. Why are Death Korps of Krieg all WW1 German army? Because gasmasks are cool and they make more people want to play IG armies. Every single army in 40k was a tabletop army before it got any real fluff notoriety. This Doylist explanation is incredibly important to understand the haphazard, everything but the kitchen sink lore of 40k, because for a long time GW just introduced visually striking armies in order to boost sales. Then around the early-00's (back when I was active in 40k) they started contracting novelists to write books in the 40k universe. Which means that basically any in-universe (Watsonian) explanation must first contend with the needs of the miniature game, which takes precedence over the desire for a consistent or coherent lore.

Once we understand that, we can also accept that a lot of things in 40k doesn't really make any sense from a world building perspective but are just sort of vaguely justified by the lore, because it makes for a cool addition to the miniature game.

It can't answer how they are the way they are based on in-universe criteria, unless one goes down the path of Fallout not making sense because we know that mutation doesn't turn people into ghouls, and that the 50s actually ended in the 50s and whatnot. If the question is whether the nature of a fictional world makes sense, then it can only be evaluated by its own criteria, or real-world science.

The reason anything is every any way in fiction is always: Because the writers want it so. Shamus Young likes to bring up the question "But what do they eat?" when talking about the internal consistency of a fictional world. 40k never bothers with answering that, because 40k isn't interested in being a meaningful world building exercise. 40k is a backdrop for imagining fierce battles between cool armies in a dystopian future. If you were to actually evaluate 40k on its own criteria it'd come up woefully short, because the lore doesn't care much about establishing things like how the Eldar get food, how a Forge World actually gets all the consumer goods needed to sustain it or how 1,000 Space Marines somehow is enough to fight and win a planet wide battle on a planet twice the size of Earth. 40k's lore is not about being consistent or coherent, it demands you turn off your disbelief and just accept that 2 guys and their pet wolf can somehow liberate a city the size of New York from a modern army's worth of enemies.

This in contrast to Fallout 1, for example, which showed us Shady Sands growing food, it explained how FEV caused mutation and how the Brotherhood of Steel came to be from the remains of military personnel and why they wanted to keep technology away from others. Fallout 1 went to great lengths to ensure internal consistency, because it kept asking "what do they eat?", "how does Junktown survive?" and "will the Masters plan even work?". Fallout 3 is the prime counter-example, where Megaton is founded around an undetonated Nuke because that's totally rad (pun intended)! 40k steers much more towards Fo3's "rule of cool" then it does Fo1's meticulous world building. And that's totally alright, not everything needs to be an Expanse-sized exercise in world building. But, we should not mistake convenience excuses ("Fenris is a snow planet therefore Vikings!") for in-depth world building, some times things exist in fiction just to be cool. Some times, that's all you need to have fun.

Not sure where the intention of the writer was brought up exactly. Then again, the writer's intention is academic as to whether things function or not.

Not really. If the writer's intention is to create a schlocky backdrop for a miniature game, then we can embrace things like a world named War where everyone is a conscripted suicidal atoner who dresses like WW1 German soldiers and where important historical figures are named Lion'el Jonson, Corvus Corax (a guy who naturally led a bunch of guys called Raven Guards) and Sanguinius (the guy who led the Blood Angels, who drink blood obvs). If they want to make a deep and compelling world with firm and consistent internal coherence, then those are right out. They work great for tongue in cheek, grimdark Space Fantasy, but you'd probably throw Winds of Winter away in disgust if GRRM introduced Nicea Labia (the sex worker!) and Slash Gladius (the mercenary who fights with two short swords) as important characters. Similarly, you'd probably not enjoy a 40k novel that was 700 pages long, most of which detailed the gritty, realistic geopolitical struggle that turned Xantar II into a Hive world and where the protagonist (an alloy smelter) is a metaphorical laden exploration of the human condition and suicidality.

Intentions and intended genre matters a whole lot as to whether a work of fiction functions or not. 40k is action schlock driven by rule of cool and that's exactly why I love it. The Expanse is 9 books worth of world building and that's why it stands out in its genre.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Corvus Corax (a guy who naturally led a bunch of guys called Raven Guards) and Sanguinius (the guy who led the Blood Angels, who drink blood obvs) If they want to make a deep and compelling world with firm and consistent internal coherence, then those are right out. They work great for tongue in cheek, grimdark Space Fantasy, but you'd probably throw Winds of Winter away in disgust if GRRM introduced Nicea Labia (the sex worker!) and Slash Gladius (the mercenary who fights with two short swords) as important characters.

Getting a bit off-topic, but I disagree somewhat there. Didn't Corax name the Raven Guard, presumably after himself? Also, is there any reason to suggest that loads of people from the tribe of Blood or whatever that adopted Sanguinius didn't have names that had to do with blood?

Likewise, in real life, Spartacus the gladiator wasn't born with that name, he was given that to associate him with the warlike people of Sparta. I seem to remember a Roman politician in the late Republic who was associated with a prostitute who'd adopted the name Swallow, as the tail of a swallow was supposed to look like female genitals or something. Only I just tried googling that to get more information and got the sort of results I really should have expected, so can't say for sure.

In general, though, 40k isn't even pretending to take itself seriously.

 

[BrawlMan]

I think if I look hard enough I can *get* what's appealing of any book, even if it's not to me. Like I *get* the appeal of comic books, Star Wars merch, romance novels and all the YA crap.

Books: Catcher In the Rye: I get why its considered important for literature, but at the same time this is a book done from the perspective of a whiny emo hipster you want to strangle with their own pretentiousness. There are maybe three or four fictional characters that made me want to do that, and this was one of them.

I don't think Holden's whiny. He's opinionated, which probably looks whiny to the people he meets and can't stand him. I wouldn't qualify him as emo or hipster either. First because those are subcultures that spawned long after Salinger came back from the war and wrote the book. Second because they don't really apply anyway. You might as well call him by any other subculture, even the historically appropriate ones (like beatnik), if it boils down to him being a social outcast. And unlike emos and hipsters Holden is truly alone, nor does he live by any specific dogma (which I think is what grates on so many people, considering he criticizes everybody else's).

Yeah he?s just an unpleasant, mouthy arsehole. I did not enjoy this book at all, and since I read it of my own volition I feel pretty confident that opinion won?t change.

Agreed. What's worse was I did not have a choice when reading it in high school. Holden is a prototype emo, punk *****, that whines about everything and constantly calls people "phony". He's your typical jerk-sue in the modern days, while "different" by 1950s standards. He's the kind of kid that would have gotten his ass kicked by the students in my high school for being such a snobby, know-nothing-know-it-all, shithead.

This clip sums up most people who read this book in middle school or high school.

 

[Hawki]

It is hardly academic, at most it might be inconsequential. However, the Doylist perspective is incredibly important, because it answers a lot of things about why works of media or art are the way they are. For 40k, for example, it is not hard to point to its roots as incredibly pulp satire.

This is being pedantic, but what exactly is 40K sattarizing? Religious fervor? Xenophobia? Technological regression? Every aspect of 40K is "to the extreme," sure, but I'm not sure what the joke is.

Why are the Grey Wolves Space Vikings? Because Vikings are cool and they are visually distinct from other space marines. Why are Death Korps of Krieg all WW1 German army? Because gasmasks are cool and they make more people want to play IG armies. Every single army in 40k was a tabletop army before it got any real fluff notoriety. This Doylist explanation is incredibly important to understand the haphazard, everything but the kitchen sink lore of 40k, because for a long time GW just introduced visually striking armies in order to boost sales. Then around the early-00's (back when I was active in 40k) they started contracting novelists to write books in the 40k universe. Which means that basically any in-universe (Watsonian) explanation must first contend with the needs of the miniature game, which takes precedence over the desire for a consistent or coherent lore.

I can't really dispute any of that per se, but I'd point out that:

-I'd argue that 40K was coherent before the 2000s. I got the 3rd edition rulebook, which was released in 1998, and the lore there was in-depth and consistent with itself.

-Okay, so the miniatures are the way they are because of brand recognition, or, I'd argue, because 40K was originally WFB in space, hence why we got space elves (eldar), space dwarfs (squats) and space orcs (um orks). But most of this stuff is still justified within the confines of the setting. Like, I can point to numerous settings where "human culture in space!" is used with no explanation. Even if it's schlock, it's schlock that's consistent with its own schlock for the most part (e.g. the necron retcon).

40k never bothers with answering that, because 40k isn't interested in being a meaningful world building exercise. 40k is a backdrop for imagining fierce battles between cool armies in a dystopian future.

If you were to actually evaluate 40k on its own criteria it'd come up woefully short, because the lore doesn't care much about establishing things like how the Eldar get food,

Craftworlds are stated to be self-sustaining. If you're talking about Dark Eldar, presumably in their slave raids.

how a Forge World actually gets all the consumer goods needed to sustain it

From agri worlds?

or how 1,000 Space Marines somehow is enough to fight and win a planet wide battle on a planet twice the size of Earth.

Space Marines are more the special forces of the setting - I don't think it's that common for them to go into battle alone. I mean, it does happen, but the Imperial Guard is established to do the bulk of the work.

This in contrast to Fallout 1, for example, which showed us Shady Sands growing food, it explained how FEV caused mutation and how the Brotherhood of Steel came to be from the remains of military personnel and why they wanted to keep technology away from others. Fallout 1 went to great lengths to ensure internal consistency, because it kept asking "what do they eat?", "how does Junktown survive?" and "will the Masters plan even work?". Fallout 3 is the prime counter-example, where Megaton is founded around an undetonated Nuke because that's totally rad (pun intended)! 40k steers much more towards Fo3's "rule of cool" then it does Fo1's meticulous world building.

At this point, I'm not sure if Fallout and 40K are really the best frames of reference to each other. Yes, both are setting driven more than plot driven, but Fallout has the advantage of being in one country, on one planet, and in each game, a minute fraction of said country. 40K is huge. Of course Fallout is going to go into more minutia, same way a fantasy planet is generally going to have more depth than a sci-fi world of the week.

But, we should not mistake convenience excuses ("Fenris is a snow planet therefore Vikings!") for in-depth world building, some times things exist in fiction just to be cool. Some times, that's all you need to have fun.

Neither of those things are exclusionary. Fenris may be Space Vikings, but it's got plenty of lore behind it.

I'll pivot to another example, Blake's 7. In Blake's 7, the crew go to a planet of humans that are Goths. How and why they're Goths is never explained. I can make inferences, but they're extremely sketchy, and as to the Doylist answer as to why they're Goths, I don't know either, and don't particuarly care either (I assume budget). Point is, they're Space Goths, and that's it.

On the flipside, look at Fenris. Why do they look like Vikings? Because they've crash landed on an ice world with creatures and a lack of any stable landmass, which necessitates a nomadic warrior culture with the ability to hunt animals to survive. Plus, whole lot of extra lore and whatnot.

Point is, Fenris could be the equivalent of Space Goths. They could be Space Vikings and leave it at that. But they aren't. Even if I accept that 40K is schlock (which it is), it clearly has worldbuilding, and a lot of it. It's worldbuilding that's apparent in codecies, and was apparent in White Dwarf before they cut back on lore bits. And if we're pivoting back to Fallout, then maybe Fenris doesn't have as much worldbuilding as post-nuclear USA, but 40K's worldbuilding has to be spread over an entire galaxy. Or, in another example, no planet in Star Wars has as much depth as Middle-earth, but the totality of its lore is still much larger than Lord of the Rings. Even if Star Wars is comparatively schlock, that doesn't diminish its worldbuilding.

Not really. If the writer's intention is to create a schlocky backdrop for a miniature game, then we can embrace things like a world named War where everyone is a conscripted suicidal atoner who dresses like WW1 German soldiers and where important historical figures are named Lion'el Jonson, Corvus Corax (a guy who naturally led a bunch of guys called Raven Guards) and Sanguinius (the guy who led the Blood Angels, who drink blood obvs). If they want to make a deep and compelling world with firm and consistent internal coherence, then those are right out. They work great for tongue in cheek, grimdark Space Fantasy, but you'd probably throw Winds of Winter away in disgust if GRRM introduced Nicea Labia (the sex worker!) and Slash Gladius (the mercenary who fights with two short swords) as important characters.

How cute, you think Winds of Winter is actually going to be released.

Also, not sure if those hypothetical characters are really a 1:1 comparison with the primarchs, since the primarchs are gods unto men, while any sod in Westeros most certainly isn't, but that aside:

Similarly, you'd probably not enjoy a 40k novel that was 700 pages long, most of which detailed the gritty, realistic geopolitical struggle that turned Xantar II into a Hive world and where the protagonist (an alloy smelter) is a metaphorical laden exploration of the human condition and suicidality.

Well, yes, I might, actually.

There's a difference between 40K and ASoIaF, in that the former is setting driven, while the latter is plot-driven. Yes, Westeros is a fleshed out world, but there's a key core plot in the books, and it's a plot that changes the nature of the setting, while in 40K and other fictional universes is setting driven (i.e. status quo is king). So, ergo, I can read the book you described, if we hold the saying as being true, and that aside, the setting of 40K is big enough to accomodate that kind of story. To nick a saying from writing courses, "context doesn't dictate content." Also, 40K's already dabbled in that kind of stuff - there's a short story from Graham McNeil I recall where the entire plot is dedicated to the Emperor meeting a priest on Terra (before unifying the planet) and the two effectively debating the pros and cons of religion. That might not be the same as 700 words, but the principle is the same. 40K might be, at its core, schlock, but it doesn't mean you can't tell other types of stories where the core of the plot isn't violence.

I should specify that this holds true for ASoIaF as well. Compare the tone of the main works to Dunk & Egg - the latter is much more lighthearted, but is still part of the same setting. A setting that has no shortage of death and misery. It's part of why I don't have any problem considering The Ice Dragon part of the setting (despite Martin's statements) because there's nothing to stop that type of story still existing in some form.

Intentions and intended genre matters a whole lot as to whether a work of fiction functions or not. 40k is action schlock driven by rule of cool and that's exactly why I love it. The Expanse is 9 books worth of world building and that's why it stands out in its genre.

I don't entirely agree.

Let's go back to 40K. We can agree that at the start, it was fluff, ported from WFB, its armies existing to sell. However, when I consider the army books, the codecies, the White Dwarfs, clearly that isn't the case. At some point, someone, or some people, decided to treat the universe as a universe. Even if the original intent was rule of cool, does that diminish the scale of the lore itself? Certainly a lot of people would argue "no," because when the lore has been changed (the necrons come to mind), people have been pissed. 40K being schlock doesn't diminish the scale of its worldbuilding. Worldbuilding that, let's face it, is more in-depth than The Expanse. That's not a shot at The Expanse - it's had far less time to build its setting after all, and it's built it well - but even if 40K is space fantasy, and Expanse hard sci-fi, 40K is still the better fleshed out universe. If you're scoffing, I'll point to some examples - describe human culture from The Expanse, then 40K. Describe how an Epstein drive works, then describe how a warp drive works. In both cases, you'd be spending far more time from 40K than The Expanse.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Getting a bit off-topic, but I disagree somewhat there. Didn't Corax name the Raven Guard, presumably after himself? Also, is there any reason to suggest that loads of people from the tribe of Blood or whatever that adopted Sanguinius didn't have names that had to do with blood?

Likewise, in real life, Spartacus the gladiator wasn't born with that name, he was given that to associate him with the warlike people of Sparta. I seem to remember a Roman politician in the late Republic who was associated with a prostitute who'd adopted the name Swallow, as the tail of a swallow was supposed to look like female genitals or something. Only I just tried googling that to get more information and got the sort of results I really should have expected, so can't say for sure.

In general, though, 40k isn't even pretending to take itself seriously.

I mean, you can always make up explanations for why a guy was given the latin name for Raven. But if you go Doylist it is pretty obvious that 40k didn't take itself seriously back then (the jury is out on how much 40k takes itself seriously now) and that a lot of the early lore is puns, references and satire. As I said, that's totally fine and there's nothing wrong with making a fictional world that's all references (pop culture and otherwise), word plays and rip-offs, but you'll get a vastly different tone then you'd get in a very serious work that's taking itself and everything it does very seriously (ie. Expanse).

And that's my point, that intention matters a great deal to how well something works. If your entire premise is easily digested pulp you don't need to explain how a city hundreds of levels high covering an entire planet works or how people get fed, you just need to tell it with style and conviction (and have Orkz raze it to the ground in an epic battle involving an asteroid as a massive drop pod). But if your story is grounded and really attempts to describe a "could be real"-fictional world, you absolutely need to explain why Hive Worlds exist, how they were built and how people are fed or your story will come crashing down when the reader rejects your premise.

To relate all this back to the original topic, this is one of my main problems with The Name of the Wind. Rothfuss doesn't seem to know whether he's telling a coming of age YA story, with most of the plot being 'Serious Harry Potter', or a traditional fantasy story. Some chapters are so much wish fulfillment through Kvothe that you can't imagine it being anything but YA (especially any time his nemesis Ambrose comes up), but then comes a chapter where the protagonists get shit-faced drunk, start talking about whores and relay some very seriously intentioned world building or vivid descriptions of dead bodies. The end result is a book that's neither drama first nor details first but rather both at different times and with wildly varying mood, depending on the chapter.

 

[Thaluikhain]

or how 1,000 Space Marines somehow is enough to fight and win a planet wide battle on a planet twice the size of Earth.

Space Marines are more the special forces of the setting - I don't think it's that common for them to go into battle alone. I mean, it does happen, but the Imperial Guard is established to do the bulk of the work.

It's also established that marines will conquer star systems by themselves and don't need assistance. The fluff contradicts itself a lot, and is particularly bad on this issue. Another big one that comes to mind is, all that mucking around with machine spirits that the Ad-Mech does, is there a point to that? Lots of authors flat out say there is not, it's all superstition, or corrupted knowledge, or the odd silly joke. Lots of authors flat out say it's important, magic and faith and daemons are very real in 40k.

Now, I was a fan of 40k in the good old days, got rather emotionally invested in the fluff, which was very foolish of me as a lot of the creators clearly were and are not.

I'll pivot to another example, Blake's 7. In Blake's 7, the crew go to a planet of humans that are Goths. How and why they're Goths is never explained. I can make inferences, but they're extremely sketchy, and as to the Doylist answer as to why they're Goths, I don't know either, and don't particuarly care either (I assume budget). Point is, they're Space Goths, and that's it.

Bad example, the name of the planet they were on was "Goth", presumably because Terry Nation thought it would sounded like a cool name, and there wasn't any real connection with the Germanic people beyond both being "barbarians".

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I don't entirely agree.

Let's go back to 40K. We can agree that at the start, it was fluff, ported from WFB, its armies existing to sell. However, when I consider the army books, the codecies, the White Dwarfs, clearly that isn't the case. At some point, someone, or some people, decided to treat the universe as a universe. Even if the original intent was rule of cool, does that diminish the scale of the lore itself? Certainly a lot of people would argue "no," because when the lore has been changed (the necrons come to mind), people have been pissed. 40K being schlock doesn't diminish the scale of its worldbuilding. Worldbuilding that, let's face it, is more in-depth than The Expanse. That's not a shot at The Expanse - it's had far less time to build its setting after all, and it's built it well - but even if 40K is space fantasy, and Expanse hard sci-fi, 40K is still the better fleshed out universe. If you're scoffing, I'll point to some examples - describe human culture from The Expanse, then 40K. Describe how an Epstein drive works, then describe how a warp drive works. In both cases, you'd be spending far more time from 40K than The Expanse.

40k has world building, I never denied that. The difference between 40k and Fallout or Expanse is the core assumption of the world building. In Fallout and the Expanse the core question is always "why does this setting work?", hence you get an explanation of Epstein drives, you get a lot of exposition on interplanetary trade, on how Ceres turned from a mining station to a political hub etc., you even get a lampshade hanging on why Miller has an anachronistic and silly hat. When you consider the Expanse it is obvious that a lot of its lore (by the admittance of the authors, who first aimed to make an RPG) was created to ensure a cohesive, grounded universe. You can pick something seemingly at random (short of the precursor Alien stuff which is yet to be answered) from the Expanse and the books will have told you why it is there and what purpose it serve, often also how it connects to other things. ASoFaI does a similar thing, were everything feels interconnected because the author has spent a lot of time figuring out the world they write about.

40k has a lot of lore, there's no denying that, and anything else would be strange after some 35 years of constant expansion of the franchise. But 40k lore is not coherent, it is not internally consistent and often straight out contradictory. Let's go back to the Space Marine example that both I and Thaluikhain have touched upon: In some stories you get 5 Assault Marines defeating 2 million Orks in urban fighting and securing a town on their own, in others they are Special Forces, in yet others they are a force multiplier like armored battalions. In some they are all completely autonomous, in others they exist in some chain of command alongside the IG and Inquisition. Some times they are pretty much similar but with surface differences in tactics and compositions, others they are almost different species because of the vagaries of their gene seed. You can apply this to pretty much any facet of 40k lore: Is the machine spirit on-board AI? Is it corrupted code? Is it just some fake religious bullshit by the Mechanicus? Look in three different places, get three different answers. 40k's lore is never really important, even GW admits that everything written is true even when it contradicts other sources, in which case reader decides which suits them best. 40k lore will warp and morph to suit the needs of whatever plot is at hand. Writing a Codex: Eldar? Shuriken Cannons can rip through Power Armor! Writing Codex: Astartes? Shuriken Cannons can't even scratch the holy paint job! Got an idea for British Kabul Expedition of 1842 in Space? Invent planet Kandahar and have an Imperial Regiment that's dressed in red coats, loves mutton chops and monocles and use single shot lasguns. (then spend all your savings to make the perfect custom miniatures)

I don't think 40k lore is bad, it works perfectly well for a setting that's meant to be a catch-all approach to grimdark sci-fi. But we should never make the mistake of thinking 40k lore is deep or well-developed. What it is is that it is incredibly voluminous and written over a long period of time by a huge amount of writers of varying capability. That makes it dense, but also contradictory and incoherent in many places. 40k lore isn't meant to do the same thing as Expanse or ASoFaI lore, which are meant to ground the reader in the universe, it is meant to serve as a springboard for whatever cool idea the writer or player wants to realize. For that it is perfect.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Agreed. What's worse was I did not have a choice when reading it in high school. Holden is a prototype emo, punk *****, that whines about everything and constantly calls people "phony". He's your typical jerk-sue in the modern days, while "different" by 1950s standards. He's the kind of kid that would have gotten his ass kicked by the students in my high school for being such a snobby, know-nothing-know-it-all, shithead.

This clip sums up most people who read this book in middle school or high school.

Umm, he did. He got beat up several times over the course of the book for egging people on until they lost their temper with him. Also 'Jerk-Sue'? Holden can't possibly be described as a Sue of any kind. Most people in the book can't stand him and the reasons are obvious and relatable. He's also portrayed as deeply flawed with his only notable talent being writing.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

If I may permit a long laugh of validation to see so many people disliking Catcher in the Rye.

I've had to read a lot of 'classic' lit in my school years and a fair bit of it was boring, but no book annoyed me quite as much as that one. Everything just blended together into this directionless gray miasma of self-created misery. When the only kind of emotions it stirs up is satisfaction to see the main character being smacked around, something has clearly gone wrong, and keep in mind I read this around the time I was his own age.

He's the prime example of how to do 'angsty teen who's recently become so painfully aware of themselves and the world's flaws that it's hard to muster up enthusiasm for anything at all' poorly, while I would cite Daria as a good one.

 

[BrawlMan]

Agreed. What's worse was I did not have a choice when reading it in high school. Holden is a prototype emo, punk *****, that whines about everything and constantly calls people "phony". He's your typical jerk-sue in the modern days, while "different" by 1950s standards. He's the kind of kid that would have gotten his ass kicked by the students in my high school for being such a snobby, know-nothing-know-it-all, shithead.

This clip sums up most people who read this book in middle school or high school.

Umm, he did. He got beat up several times over the course of the book for egging people on until they lost their temper with him. Also 'Jerk-Sue'? Holden can't possibly be described as a Sue of any kind. Most people in the book can't stand him and the reasons are obvious and relatable. He's also portrayed as deeply flawed with his only notable talent being writing.

I've forgotten about those small details (which proves my point about the ass kicking), because I have not read that book since I was 15 (I vowed never to read it again). He's a jerk sue in the we're supposed to find him relatable and sympathetic. When he's neither. Not mention shitheads like him are a dime dozen on the Internet. You could find guys/gals like that on the imdb forums, GameFAQs, here, and reddit.

If I may permit a long laugh of validation to see so many people disliking Catcher in the Rye.

I've had to read a lot of 'classic' lit in my school years and a fair bit of it was boring, but no book annoyed me quite as much as that one. Everything just blended together into this directionless gray miasma of self-created misery. When the only kind of emotions it stirs up is satisfaction to see the main character being smacked around, something has clearly gone wrong, and keep in mind I read this around the time I was his own age.

He's the prime example of how to do 'angsty teen who's recently become so painfully aware of themselves and the world's flaws that it's hard to muster up enthusiasm for anything at all' poorly, while I would cite Daria as a good one.

Took the words right out of my mouth. Holden would not be able to last against Daria.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Why did the 40K writers use cultural archtypes? Familiarity? Ease of development? Porting over from Fantasy Battle and things slip through (hence, space elves and space orcs/orks?) Point is, it's academic as to "why," least in the context of the actual conversation. As to why Interplay chose 1950s retrofuturism for Fallout, no idea.

Here's the thing, Interplay's retrofuturism isn't 1950s.

https://youtu.be/geLiEiAiQJA (Can't get youtube links to work)

Sure it's got nuclear powered 50s cars and black and white home televisions, but you've got world war 2 style propaganda, wartime music and art deco skyscrapers that wouldn't look out of place in Rapture. The retrofuturism here isn't from any single era, it's a mash-up of several eras. It's also clearly dystopian (something which gets elaborated on explicitly in Fallout 2).

They chose retrofuturism to reference or evoke the early 20th century pulp science fiction genre, which is a big part of Fallout's thematic influence, and to juxtapose the generally optimistic tone of retrofuturism with the harsh reality of the Fallout setting.

Justification for the state of a fictional setting can only come from a fictional setting itself, or in some occasions, "word of God" on the nature of the setting itself.

I've noticed that you don't adhere to this though. You use metatextuality, you talk about fiction having a message or subtext. This isn't possible unless we accept that fiction is not self-justifying.

For example, it shouldn't matter if Tom Clancy uses the same plot over and over again because that's not part of the fictional setting of his stories. It doesn't matter if his work is clearly driven by some kind of US chauvanism, because in his books the USA really is awesome, or at least he never tells you it isn't. If you can't judge the basis of the things that are not in the text, then you can't really judge at all.

In reality, of course, all this stuff is extremely relevant and a valid criteria for judgement.

In fact, rather than nitpicking I'm just going to let Gethsemani's last post stand because I couldn't have made my point better.

 

[Hawki]

And that's my point, that intention matters a great deal to how well something works. If your entire premise is easily digested pulp you don't need to explain how a city hundreds of levels high covering an entire planet works or how people get fed, you just need to tell it with style and conviction (and have Orkz raze it to the ground in an epic battle involving an asteroid as a massive drop pod). But if your story is grounded and really attempts to describe a "could be real"-fictional world, you absolutely need to explain why Hive Worlds exist, how they were built and how people are fed or your story will come crashing down when the reader rejects your premise.

Except...we do know how they work?

Look, I'm not disputing that a pulp setting doesn't need to spend time explaining the minutia of worldbuilding, but it's not an either/or proposition.

Bad example, the name of the planet they were on was "Goth", presumably because Terry Nation thought it would sounded like a cool name, and there wasn't any real connection with the Germanic people beyond both being "barbarians".

Okay, but they look like Goths, and act like Goths, and talk like Goths, so...

Point is, the episode never explains how and why these people became like Goths. Fenris does explain how its people became like Vikings, or at least, how they got from point A (colony ships) to point B (adapting to their world), plus the contextual side of things (thousands of years of isolation for human worlds). Blake's 7 doesn't really provide much of an explanation as to why things are the way they are.

In Fallout and the Expanse the core question is always "why does this setting work?", hence you get an explanation of Epstein drives, you get a lot of exposition on interplanetary trade, on how Ceres turned from a mining station to a political hub etc., you even get a lampshade hanging on why Miller has an anachronistic and silly hat. When you consider the Expanse it is obvious that a lot of its lore (by the admittance of the authors, who first aimed to make an RPG) was created to ensure a cohesive, grounded universe.

Look, I get what you're saying, but...

You can pick something seemingly at random (short of the precursor Alien stuff which is yet to be answered) from the Expanse and the books will have told you why it is there and what purpose it serve, often also how it connects to other things.[/quote]

I can do the same thing in 40K. Ask a person how or why things are the way they are, there's usually an explanation.

Let's go back to the Space Marine example that both I and Thaluikhain have touched upon: In some stories you get 5 Assault Marines defeating 2 million Orks in urban fighting and securing a town on their own, in others they are Special Forces, in yet others they are a force multiplier like armored battalions. In some they are all completely autonomous, in others they exist in some chain of command alongside the IG and Inquisition. Some times they are pretty much similar but with surface differences in tactics and compositions, others they are almost different species because of the vagaries of their gene seed.

I'll have to take your word on the story thing because I've never seen any such story where the odds are that much in the marines' disfavour (or favour, if you're being snarky).

Again, I see what you're getting at, but the whole Space Marine 'thing' is accounted for within the setting, in that there's some Space Marine chapters that number well over a thousand (e.g. the Black Templars), while others follow the Codex Astartes to a T (e.g. the Ultramarines). I do agree that the Space Marines tend to be portrayed as 'uber' to an extent that doesn't feel right given that chapters are usually small, but that these discrepencies are justified at all is still better worldbuilding than a lot of sci-fi settings might get.

You can apply this to pretty much any facet of 40k lore: Is the machine spirit on-board AI? Is it corrupted code? Is it just some fake religious bullshit by the Mechanicus? Look in three different places, get three different answers.

IIRC, the Machine God thing is meant to be intentionally ambiguous. Is the Machine God the Emperor? The Void Dragon? Something else? Total BS? We don't know, and different people in the setting have different ideas.

Like, okay, I can buy that the Machine God concept has warped over time, but I don't think that's the best example.

Got an idea for British Kabul Expedition of 1842 in Space? Invent planet Kandahar and have an Imperial Regiment that's dressed in red coats, loves mutton chops and monocles and use single shot lasguns. (then spend all your savings to make the perfect custom miniatures)

Wait, I thought you could buy Praetorians straight up front nowadays?

Not that I'm actually going to buy anything from Games Workshop, given those prices.

I've noticed that you don't adhere to this though. You use metatextuality,

Metatextuality? You mean one text commenting on another text? Where have I done that? Not much has been written on any of these settings via publication.

you talk about fiction having a message or subtext. This isn't possible unless we accept that fiction is not self-justifying.

Theme/subtext is separate from worldbuilding.

I've already used Lord of the Rings, so let's use...I dunno, the Chronicles of Narnia. If I'm looking it in terms of theme/subtext, then it's a Christian parable tale that, IMO, mostly succeeds. If I'm judging the setting on worldbuilding and internal consistency, then things fall apart. I can accept that the series succeeds on the thematic level, and fails on the worldbuilding level, and also accept that for the most part, any literary analysis of the setting is going to focus on the former, while when I've dabbled in the setting, I've always been more interested in the latter.

That's not to say that a work can't be both analagous and self-consistent (e.g. Brave New World, 1984), or where lack of worldbuilding harms the theme (e.g. Terra Nullius), but usually these things are separate.

For example, it shouldn't matter if Tom Clancy uses the same plot over and over again because that's not part of the fictional setting of his stories. It doesn't matter if his work is clearly driven by some kind of US chauvanism, because in his books the USA really is awesome, or at least he never tells you it isn't. If you can't judge the basis of the things that are not in the text, then you can't really judge at all.

Does Tom Clancy belong here? For the most part, his books aren't some self-contained universe, they're simply our world. Yes, you can be pedantic and point out that there's never been a US president named Jack Ryan, among other things, but I don't think one can really look at the Clancy novels in terms of worldbuilding. Granted, I've never read any of them, but I can cite Tomorrow. Yes, it technically has worldbuilding, in that the nation which attacks Australia is clearly a fictional one, but while naming it might have alleviated some of the issues I had with the book, I doubt I'd have liked it that much more for it.

In reality, of course, all this stuff is extremely relevant and a valid criteria for judgement.

Wait, what are we actually disagreeing on? That theme/subtext and worldbuilding can be judged? Um, yeah? That isn't exactly revalatory. If you're saying that they're judged as one package though, that depends. I mean, maybe on the level of personal enjoyment, but you can easily separate the two. This thread, we're focusing on worldbuilding. In literary critique, worldbuilding rarely comes into play.

 

[Dansen]

The discussion in the VS. thread got me thinking about The Name of the Wind. I just cannot comprehend how a book like that can become so massively popular. Throngs of people praise it as a masterpiece with beautiful, poetry-like prose. I just can't understand it.

The main character, Kvothe, is arrogant, rude, and behaves like a psychopath. Despite these glaring character flaws, everyone loves him and he has loyal friends. In fact, he is only disliked by the antagonists, and they only hate him because they are jealous of his intellect, talents, and good looks. The side characters are all completely one dimensional and only exist to be impressed by Kvothe or otherwise create situations for him to show off.

The plot is non-existent. You could cut out 9/10th of the pages and not lose any character development or advancement of Kvothe's stated goals. The majority of the novel is an endlessly recycled subplot focusing on Kvothe's struggle to make enough money to pay for his student loans, despite innumerable skills and marketable talents. The framing story promises far more intriguing mysteries with demon spiders and the like, but rather, we spend the entirety of the 700 page book reading the biography of the worlds most boring living legend. It's obvious that this series will never have a satisfying ending judging by the abysmal plotting of the first entry.

People claim that the book is making some sort of meta statement with an unreliable narrator, but the Kvothe we see in the third person segments is just as perfect as the Kvothe who is narrating the first person sections.

And the writing is just so dreadfully cringeworthy.

Spoiler: A silence of three parts

The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn's sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversation and laughter, the clatter and clamor one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of night. If there had been music .. . but no, of course there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained.
Inside the Waystone a pair of men huddled at one corner of the bar. They drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussions of troubling news. In doing this they added a small, sullen silence to the larger, hollow one. It made an alloy of sorts, a counterpoint.

The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough, splintering barrels behind the bar. It was in the weight of the black stone hearth that held the heat of a long dead fire. It was in the slow back and forth of a white linen cloth rubbing along the grain of the bar. And it was in the hands of the man who stood there, polishing a stretch of mahogany that already gleamed in the lamplight.
The man had true-red hair, red as flame. His eyes were dark and distant, and he moved with the subtle certainty that comes from knowing many things.

The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn's ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.

It's just gibberish. Words piled upon words, not actually describing anything. 344 words used to convey the point that "it was unusually quiet." I could pick through and describe why any particular sentence is meaningless, but I'll suffice it to say that it all just makes me want to crawl out of my skin.

And yet, despite all that and more, this is a best seller. It rates 4.5 stars on Good Reads. I could barely bring myself to read all the way through, yet millions are clamoring for more.

It seems to happen so often. Utter drek becomes a massive critical and financial success. Twilight, Eragon, 50 Shades of Grey, Ready Player One, to name a few popular examples. How does it happen? Is the rest of the world just so poorly read that they can't tell good writing from bad? Or am I just crazy or too stupid to see the obvious genius that these works contain? Or is it all due to a master level marketing scheme, and the quality of the writing is, in fact, irrelevant? I don't know.

What books do you find inexplicably popular?

"Name of the Wind" is okay, its got flaws but it is hardly a bad book. Not sure why you hate it so much. The point of the passage you chose was to set a scene for the reader, not sure what the issue is. Its not bad writing just cause you don't personally like the prose.

The inheritance trilogy is a YA series no shit the writing doesn't hold up but its fine at what it does. Eragon is the only real "bad" one with it basically being a beat for beat rip off of A New Hope.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Okay, but they look like Goths, and act like Goths, and talk like Goths, so...

Point is, the episode never explains how and why these people became like Goths. Fenris does explain how its people became like Vikings, or at least, how they got from point A (colony ships) to point B (adapting to their world), plus the contextual side of things (thousands of years of isolation for human worlds). Blake's 7 doesn't really provide much of an explanation as to why things are the way they are.

In what way are they Goths, and not generic (white) barbarians? Apart from living underground in tents, having crossbows that fire explosive bolts and wearing helmets that protect from the sulfur fumes on the surface and being really camp, that is.

Stick the same people in a cave in Fenris and they'd work just as well. Again, getting off-topic though.

Wait, I thought you could buy Praetorians straight up front nowadays?

Not that I'm actually going to buy anything from Games Workshop, given those prices.

The only metal IG squad you can still get is Steel Legion (and when they have special made to order things like they did with the Valhallans recently). Haven't sold Mordians for years, let alone Praetorians. There's some odd metal models like snipers or some characters, but they are much more recent than Praetorians.

(And, currently they are selling nothing, all shops are closed and all orders suspended due to plague, of course)

 

[Hawki]

In what way are they Goths, and not generic (white) barbarians? Apart from living underground in tents, having crossbows that fire explosive bolts and wearing helmets that protect from the sulfur fumes on the surface and being really camp, that is.

Okay, fine. Point is, we don't know how or why these people regressed to become Goths, or "generic barbarians," or whatever. With Fenris however, we do.

(And, currently they are selling nothing, all shops are closed and all orders suspended due to plague, of course)

Nurgle's having a field day.