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The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
Just finished the Priests of Mars trilogy. It was, honestly, probably the best 40k fiction I've ever read, especially with regards to the two Magos Tychons. Like that was actually emotive writing.

Also hilarious how the entire series just kept dumping over and over again on poor Guardsman Hawke (of Storm of Iron fame).

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The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
I've read the first five odd books of the beast arises and they're all, speaking generously, incredibly super loving dumb.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Skarsnik posted:

That's basically every BL book though? We're not reading actual literature here

most BL books are merely dumb.


incredibly super loving dumb is some next level poo poo.


like say what you will about Horus Heresy bolter porn or the endless novels about inquisitors, but they're not nearly as stupid as an Ork death star that kills the armies of terra by crushing millions of people between its eyebrows, that are the size of mountain ranges.

and despite the fact that that sounds absolutely amazing, it's just terrible and stupid and gross.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
Honestly I quite like Angel Exterminatus, and Perturabo was fantastic all the way through. Not sure why people disliked it, it was one of the better Heresy books if I remember correctly. I enjoyed it much more than the Imperium Secundus stuff or Nick Kyme's work.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Moose-Alini posted:

Are the later Gaunts Ghost books better? I liked the first one okay, but was disappointed the baddie had to be chaos instead of just people fighting against a brutal repressive regime.

oh you sweet summer child

the imperium is the brutal repressive regime that we all know and love

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Safety Factor posted:

Angels of Caliban was decent. The two main plotlines are the Lion hunting Curze in Imperium Secundus and Luther doing his thing on Caliban. No Erebus involved at all. The ending is really loving stupid though.

Have to disagree with this. Everyone in Angels of Caliban was aggressively, painfully stupid. It develops the plot, but in the stupidest possible way. Better to read a synopsis than suffer through reading it yourself.


Hopefully Praetorians of Dorn is better, as it's next on my list.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

mango sentinel posted:

Heard in a podcast that some cool stuff happens in there but I trust you guys over them. Gonna skip ahead to Legion.

I mean do you not want to read about space marines shoving a spiky metal pear up their primarch's butt in great detail

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
Sanguinius Sucks: Sadistic S&M

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
Master of Machocism

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
I'm like 99% sure you can find an epub somewhere, and you can convert an epub to a mobi (kindle format) pretty trivially.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
In other news, I feel there's a certain irony in wearing a black library bag while visiting St. Peter's Basilica in the Holy See.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

You have to check out the full statement. It's hilarious.

http://www.peta.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Games-Workshop-Ban-Fur-Letter.pdf

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
Pounded in the butt by the God-Emperor's dessicated corpse and his 18 sons

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
Know No Fear is probably the best Horus Heresy book. It's just absolutely brilliant in almost every way, and the comparison to Fury Road is spot on. Absolutely recommended, absolutely high quality, absolutely fantastic.

Decent Bolter Porn undersells it a great deal.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Hot Dog Day #82 posted:

Has anyone read the books about the Battlefleet Gothic Imperial Navy books? Reading about colossal grim dark spaceships sounds amazing, but I'm pretty sure that the trilogy they are in is unfinished/dead in the water...

They're decent if unspectacular. The spaceship combat is good though, and frankly that's what you read it for.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
E: Ah, my own fault then.

The Iron Rose fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Mar 5, 2017

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Skarsnik posted:

Someone has been editing BL stuff and releasing them as :filez:

So it's kind of like when idiots post on support forums with error messages that only appear in pirated games

Well that explains that then!

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Gravitas Shortfall posted:

Spoiler alert, it's possible to enjoy trashy genre fiction as well as mainstream literature.

I assume, I only read trash.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
Pretty sure they're all avatars of autism, except for like, Russ and Angron.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Uncle w Benefits posted:

What is a neo-liberal death cult?

I explained the relevant international law surrounding targeted killing and drone use (which is very friendly to both), and was rewarded as a result.

I actually love it though.


In other words I was acting as an IoM lawyer.

The Iron Rose fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Apr 25, 2017

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Uncle w Benefits posted:

Soooo America using drones?

Yeah basically.

I was trying to shoehorn a reference to the Imperium and bearing my wounds from heretics proudly and all that but it's just not working.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

AndyElusive posted:

I'm tentatively considering picking up Battlefleet Gothic Armada but the reviews are making me question if it's worth it? I guess for the single player alone it is, but if I'm looking for any kind of multiplayer it sounds like the community has up and dumped the game due to lack of support. Is this right?

It's a great game, and you can do multiplayer against bots as well.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
The Beast Arises is terrrrrrrible. Dumb, but not in the fun schlocky way most Warhams books are. Just dumb and bad, to the point that the entire thing is ridiculous, to the point that the series is unenjoyable as a result.

It honestly reads like something from 30 years ago when canon was a lot fuzzier than it is now.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Uroboros posted:

Doesn't Gaunt know Kowle and was responsible for side-lining his career after Kowle had an officer shot for not shaving properly or something equally trivial?

Almost exactly correct, wow. Sidelined him before a big battle in the crusade, hamstringing his career, for flogging one of his men to death for wearing the wrong badge on his cap.

Which, to be fair, could've been a rank insignia or something in which case that makes comparatively more sense in the 40k universe.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

berzerkmonkey posted:


The Wolves were goaded into their attack on Prospero by someone they thought was the Emperor's right-hand man. That doesn't make them traitors in disguise.

Try selling "Oh but I didn't know my priest/governor/mayor was a traitor!" to your local inquisitor and see how far it gets you :colbert:

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Khizan posted:

Pretty sure the Space Wolves do not have a problem with telling the Inquisition to go gently caress themselves.

in retrospect this was possibly the worst example I could've chosen :v:

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

SRM posted:

:siren:ATTENTION PEOPLE WITH PIRATED BL BOOKS:siren:
If you find more excerpts like that Perturabo or Guilliman fisting passage, send them my way. I want to read that poo poo on the show!

Apparently from checking this out it's the primarch book series (the new ones) that have the hilarious sequences. Regretfully I think Gulliman fisting one was the best, the other stuff I've seen posted as examples is just stupid "no you hang up no you hang up" repeated for half a page.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Waroduce posted:

the asoif and 40k crossfic is priceless if you havent read it

i dont wanna dig out my harddrive does anyone have it

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f8zAAHhOqBNbDVmfn1_Qz5ysvr0Q8QhhFOQPH_LRgE8

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Syncopated posted:

This is 240 pages!?

It's only 140,000 words. By no means the longest fanfic I've seen, it'll take you what, 3 hours to read? though certainly an impressive achievement nonetheless.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

berzerkmonkey posted:

Source
It was a project commissioned before the Heresy by Gulliman, and was put on hold when the HH started. Cawl's been tweaking it over the millennia, and now that RG is back, they're being unleashed. Some chapters love them, some hate them, some are being used to restock chapters that are extinct/on the verge.

Part of the blame for this, I feel, goes on the people that have been calling for "truescale Marines" over the years and bitching about the size disparity between models.

That being said, they are going to look badass as vanilla Marines next to IG or whatever in SWA.

say what you will (it's dumb) the new space marines and their models actually look really good

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
When you think about it, they really missed an opportunity with the primaris space marines to at least extend that to women.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

berzerkmonkey posted:

Why? SMs are sexless monsters - who cares if they are female? Primaris Marines are doubly so, since they are vat grown. Cripes, I don't' get this weird fetish with having female versions of 9 foot tall sterilized sociopaths.

because I'm a woman, I like some representation in my lovely scifi genre schlock, and I'm more than a little tired of the fact that Warhammer 40k is a gigantic sausagefest.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
Ah, I love how the slightest suggestion brings out the grognard rage

:allears:

Seriously though, why is female SMs not an answer?

Like this is the question no one has ever been able to answer me. In the grim darkness of the far future, why should space marines only be male?

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

jadebullet posted:

Because Space Marines aren't really male, they are weapons made out of flesh. A female marine would be pretty much the same exact thing as a male one. (Particularly since it is established that the geneseed even goes as far as adjusting the appearance of the Marines to be closer to the primarchs)


Exactly, I agree entirely!

Which is why I utterly fail to understand the inevitable wailing whenever someone proposes female space marines or increased female representation generally. It makes no difference within the existing universe, so why not make the change through a vehicle that doesn't make it an outright retcon (hence why primaris marines would be perfect). Since they are, as you say, just weapons independent of gender or sex, why not make the change that appeals to more folks in the real world? Let me have my power fantasy, I say.


Heck, I don't even care about any model changes (with helmeted space marines, I expect there would literally need be none), I only ever read the novels.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

jadebullet posted:

Because I would much prefer something that has more substance representation wise than just saying "this slab of meat started out as a woman" since the end result would be the exact same. (Even without a helmet.) That's just cheap lipservice, particularly since they aren't human anymore. Plus, there is a good chance that the genetics and geneseed and that would possibly develop them into males along the way anyway. (Seeing as all males started out female and with all the genesculpting and hormones and poo poo)

I would rather have more representation in the guard by giving us some female heads. Or updated Sisters of Battle, which are arguably more badass than the Space Marines. Or even more inquisitors.

Okay, but cheap lipservice is better than nothing.

Like, even if it's literally just adding an "s" before the "he" on the page and nothing else change, that's good enough?

Why do men get to be the default here? Because besides the sexism of thirty years ago saying "no girls allowed!" and hilarious vague allusions to "b-b-but it's a literary reference to monks!" I've not gotten a real answer as to why y'all object to female space marines.

Like, you're saying that it's substanceless representation as if that's a reason to keep space marines male only. It's not. It's the very fact that the gender of space marines is meaningless that substanceless that means there's literally no reason not to.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Telsa Cola posted:

Also as a minority, cheap lip service is arguably worse than nothing because it can basically appease people by making it seem like problem is addressed when really they just sweep it aside. You would really be happy with them adding a few s's to some space marines? Why not instead push for more and better representstion of female guardsmen, SOB/SOS or literally anything else in general.



But yeah, better representation of female guardsmen, sisters of battle, and inquistors is all great! But 90% of BL novels are about space marines, 90% of what people read is about space marines, literally just adding a few "s"es is all it takes to make the setting less alienating, no pun intended.

That's it! And I don't see why that's such a problem for you.

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Telsa Cola posted:

This bascially, there is waaay to much fluff and built up setting pointing to why the marines are the way they are and it would feel really weird and like very poorly done lip service to slap a few shes in there. Female custodes would be super awesome and they are not super established so thats an easy one. Maybe have them work out a way to make SOB be bio enchanced, I dunno. The point is that there is a both in and out of setting reasons why marines are male.

precisely why, seeing as time travel is impossible, using the completely blank slate primaris marines would be a perfect mechanism to do so, and I feel like it's a missed opportunity

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Telsa Cola posted:

Oh, no thats a good idea. Im sorry if you stated that earlier and I missed this, i thought we were talking about regular marines. There is enough leeway with how they were made that I see that fitting into the setting easy enough and the implications would be ideal (double your recruitment pool anyone?).

Yeah that was why I was like "what" about all that! it'd be pretty dumb to change every space marine chapter now, that's a good 30 years too late. It's an established part of the lore and not something that's really worth changing.

But if you're introducing a new breed of space marine anyways, and given it'd make a lot of sense lore wise...

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Kaal posted:

Why not just make them normal, well-adjusted human beings at that point? Because basically what you're describing are HALO Spartans - power armored super soldiers with generic personalities. I don't see the upside here. The Baroque neoclassical mentality mimicking medieval structures and cultural mores is a defining element of the Space Marines / Sisters of Battle. Removing that distinction by making Woke Marines seems more disruptive than anything else. I mean I recognize that all you're wanting to do is break up the boys club and be more inclusive, but unfair exclusivity and gender norm enforcement is part of the dystopia fiction.

nah actually, the imperium is a dystopia but it's never been one that's reflected real world issues in the day to day. It's never trafficked in overt racism or the enforcement of gender norms other than with Space Marines and male authors writing about male characters.

But I have to say I really like the implication that making some Primaris Marines female is equivalent to turning 40k into Halo, good grief y'all get mad about someone breaking up the boys club.

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The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Arquinsiel posted:

What exactly do you think "purge the xenos" means?

ain't remotely the same as "purge the darkies"

No one's ever been mistreated in black library novels based on the colour of their skin, not that I've ever seen.

Kaal posted:

I don't think anyone suggested that the fiction reflects the real world in any particular way. But obviously there is unfairness and discrimination throughout the universe. Slavery is endemic throughout the empire, the Imperium hunts down heretics and mutants with brutal force, and the system as a whole is an unforgiving oligarchy that shrugs at individual rights or suffering. So dividing the power armor folks into Space Marines for boys, Sisters of Battle for girls, certainly works within that system.

It really does seem that your suggested retcons only serve to make the Space Marines even more generic than they already are, and you haven't really explained why that would be a good narrative addition besides it appealing to your preferred power fantasy. You don't need to get mad about it, just recognize that it would also have negative effects to other parts of the fiction that you are ignoring because you apparently don't care about them.

I mean ultimately, here's the thing. You guys can't actually have it both ways. Either adding an "s" is a completely inconsequential change that serves as meaningless lipservice, or it's a serious change that will "make space marines more generic." I'm not seeing any negative effects whatsoever, other than that it'll annoy people to whom the idea of female space marines seems 'wrong' for no other reason than inertia and halfhearted monastic justifications that scarcely seem reasonable in the face of vikings and vampires. It's a justification that's constructed in retrospect, and frankly, it's sci fi in space. Nothing space marines do in the fiction requires them to have a dick.

I'm not even asking for any retcons - hell, I'm not asking for anything. But I don't think that making the franchise appealing to a broader section of the population and divesting itself of archaic, misogynist trappings is something that has any negative effects on any other aspect of the fiction. I think that the primaris marines were a great opportunity to do exactly that, I'm disappointed they didn't, I'm sadly unsurprised that this is the reaction I got for going "hey this is a cool thing that could probably help get more women interested in the fandom!"

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