the_dunk_tank

The takeaway: Thematic/Material Analysis, vs diegetic essentialist problematic interpretations

Fuck, are we at the end yet? Thank God. The tl;dr is almost here.

When you make an argument like "Salamanders are comrades because in this book they did a thing that was nice, and that's like communism, so they're communists," you are doing the leftist version of DE to keep this consumer identity going. It is exactly the same as a shitty 40klore thread (redundant, I know).

It is the "leftist" version of "no female space marines."

Or, not to put this user on blast, but the recent "Chorfs are capitalist?!??" post is another great example. It would be one thing if we could examine the story and see their mode of production and, wow, look, the author included enclosure of the commons and theft of surplus value, I wonder if that was intentional? But no. The argument is "Chorfs are greedy industrialists. Capitalism has greedy industrialists. Chorfs capitalist?!??"

Lost in this kind of nonsense are basic critical questions. E.g., what was the author(s)' intent? What is the value of this criticism? Is this what the story is about, or is there only incidental interpretive evidence?

What's happening here, is leftists are using the Thermian Argument in reverse. They're using DE to say a story objectively has a message that it does not possess, and that no author intended. And, even worse, that even the interpretation is an idiotic stretch. All this to keep the fan content churning.

Do you see how foolish this exercise is? Do you see how the point isn't to critique or analyze or enjoy a work, but to create a competitive context to keep people trapped in these consumer categories?

It would be one thing if, like is the case with Krieg and Space Marines, people were deliberately misinterpreting lore as an endorsement of fascism (using an admittedly lazy and inconsistent framing where they're arguably not wrong). Especially since there's a material effect that misinterpretation(?) has on our lives.

But if we're just arguing about the fucking lore, the answer is that's it's just a bunch of shit designed by Tory adjacent Anglos to sell toys. That's it. Most Warhammer fluff isn't even worth analysis or critique, it's got nothing in it. Even the DEckhead has to scrape the bottom of the barrel most times. Sometimes literal sentences are their only "evidence."

If you want to break out of this hell, you have to start using actual tools of critical media analysis. And absolutely the first step of that is throwing Diegetic Essentialism out the window.

Don't think about lore as real, think of it as decoration for a product, made by tired authors and artists who largely aren't getting any credit.

When you want to have one of these silly takes, ask yourself instead, "what was the person writing this lore trying to accomplish?"

The answer typically, in Warhammer's case, is not much.

This is not to say there's nothing about it to discuss, far from it. We could talk all day about what Warhammer considers normal and what it says about Western values.

But there's no intelligent things to glean from the lore itself. The tl;dr

There is no canon. The lore is not real. It cannot mean or imply anything not expressed by the authors and artists, or so strongly evident in the assumptions of the story, that it's an inescapable facet of it (e.g. Imperium and fascism).

If you don't want to be a consumer brained moron, stop asking """''factual""""" questions about the lore, and ask instead, "what did the author mean?" "How was this work produced and for what reason?" "Who made it?" "How does it make me feel and what are its themes?" And, most importantly, "is this even good? Is it even worth my time or analysis?"

Otherwise, you're just trapping yourself into a series of pointless arguments to justify your consumption, forever. And you'll be polluting the sub, and dragging everyone else down with you.

Peace, thank you for reading this incredibly stupid essay.