# Demystifying Fantasy - Is a Skill Issue tags: #thoughts #game/wargame/warhammer-40k Well so much for not writing things for a bit. Instead, I have to see a ridiculous piece of puffery connected to an absolutely inane move by Games Workshop and somehow it never gets better, does it? In this case, I can thank Line Doggie for bringing something to sit right in front of my face. And let me be clear, I'm not blaming LD for this existing. But, there may be a little bit of light judgment for simply dropping it there with no commentary on his part. I'm curious if anyone ever thinks about these things the way I do.  Fine, right? Just a link. But then we get to this:  Let me give you the quick and short summary of how we got here: Games Workshop put out their most recent edition of the **[[Warhammer 40k]]** *Eldar Codex* very recently, and it's having inconsistent reviews. They managed to get rid of one of their most interesting pivotal characters by simply not mentioning that he exists or giving stats for him again.^[[Prince Yriel](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Yriel), we hardly knew ye. Well, we knew you a fair amount but you deserved better than this as a holder of one of the Crone Swords, damnit.] The mechanics are a little bit of a grab bag of thoughts here and there, but the big scream is that there seems to be a redefinition of what Wraithbone is in the context of the game. Classically (and by that I mean 2nd edition and up to 9th), it is a material made out of manifested psychic energy which the [Eldar Bonesingers](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Bonesinger) bring into being through their psychic powers. And from which pretty much all of their technology is built. This explains why it looks so cool and so very different: it is literally drawn into place with psychic power and as much mind-smoothed as it is a manifestation of living beings. It's pretty fucking cool is what I'm saying. It's magic shit. Now, fast forward to today in the new 10th edition *Eldar Codex*, and we have the following excerpt: ![[Demystified Fantasy - 40iklore.jpg]] > The wraithbone substance from which each craft world is wrought is a composite material formed from various compounds, ores, and minerals; it is as much grown as it is forged. Obviously, in a sane world this would be ultimately meaningless, but we don't live in a sane world. Instead, people are looking for an opportunity to go on at ridiculous length and ramble about any kind of stupid shit they can come up with that connects to this even sideways. *(So says the guy currently writing what will end up being at least 1,500 words on the subject.)* So, what's the problem here? Well, it is primarily that the writers they have attached to 10th edition of **Warhammer 40k** have about as much creativity and as deep a capacity for understanding the setting as two chickens with their heads cut off running into one another over and over again until they run out of blood. Actually, come to think of it, the chickens probably have an advantage in creativity. The problem is *not* that wraithbone is **a composite material formed from various compounds, ores, and minerals** — but that it is absolutely sidestepped that it is utterly without precedent in our universe before it is drawn into it by psychic power and formed by effectively magical means. From the point of view of writing and understanding context, this is a shitty move literally because it's in the *Eldar Codex*. It's not inherently stupid to have written, it's simply stupid to have written it *here*. If it had been in an Imperium Codex, maybe something for the [Adeptus Mechanicus](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Adeptus_Mechanicus) then it would have been positively perfect. Yes, it's made of compounds, ores, and minerals — that's what they understand! They have no idea why it can do what it does or how those particular compounds, ores, and minerals came to be in that particularly unexpected and never seen configuration. But a gross material breakdown of just what it is makes perfect sense for the Adeptus Mechanicus to say about it. Just as when you give Ork "technology" to the Adeptus Mechanicus, they look at it and say, *["Yes, it's made out of parts of stuff, and I have no idea how this thing actually works, much less how they get it to stay together."*](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Orks) The problem is that this is in the *Eldar Codex* and the Eldar *absolutely* do not think about things from that perspective. Eldar *players* don't think about things from that perspective. The whole point of the Codex should be to present the Eldar as cool and interesting and with deep lore which is specifically Eldar. All the writing in the book, even the stuff that's not written in character explicitly, should be Eldar flavored. This is doubly so because Games Workshop has fallen back on the *"no material is truly without a viewpoint and suffers from the unreliable narrator"* perspective to handwave all sorts of stupid failures in their continuity and writing over the decades. Yes, this includes what should be objective content "in fluff" in their own codices and rule books. So I look at this and think of it as what is essentially a sign of less creative writers having infected GW and doing the stuff that uncreative writers do: express that they are unable to see the world or depict a world which is unrelated to their personal worldview and slapping it on the page. That's exactly what GW writers have been doing for quite a while now, and it is what it is. They suck. This isn't news. So that disposes of the tempest in a teapot of the actual text. Now let's talk about *this* motherfucker in the video because he is exhibiting exactly the same kind of failure of imagination that the GW writers do all over the place, except that he's being even more self-righteous and pretentious about it.^[Alright, I'll alow *"equally as"*, given the stuff GW writers have said in public recently.] One of the things I hate in what has become "the hobby" is that creeping infection of the inability to imagine people have to drag their own personal philosophies and and ignorance wherever they go and splatter it all over other people's fun. The majority of current imbeciles doing that are the woke, sure, but we have a long, long history of having to deal with the insipid religious doing exactly the same thing just from the other direction, and I have to be honest with you, I don't care for that either. One of the bits of argumentation that gets right up my ass is the contention that the modern world around us has been demystified by a change in philosophical worldview from the ancient belief that everything is spiritual and imbued with essentially unknowable and effectively irrational spirit, compared to the world of the Enlightenment where a broader belief in scientific thinking which looked at process and potential by way of essentially knowable and rational knowledge. The argument is that the spiritual and unknowable is better for you and better for the speaker and is a preferential way to view the world. That taking away the essential irrationality assumption of the world is a net loss for humanity and reduces the level of wonder that an individual can feel when they look out on the wider universe. That is some bullshit of the purest ray sublime. I don't have words intense enough in any of the languages I can get by in which are derogatory to a degree which I think is applicable here. If you don't look out at the universe and see amazing, incredible, wonderful things and it doesn't make you that much more excited to know that they are knowable, that they are comprehensible, even if you have no idea about how they function or why they function or how they got there to ask. If the idea that you could, with enough effort and a bit of inspiration, understand the minutely — if that doesn't get you excited and pumped up about the universe around you and you would prefer to simply accept that it's effectively out of your capability to understand and not only that you shouldn't try because it's essentially irrational and beyond you… That just tells me you aren't a person worth the cytoplasm in your cells. I don't respect you. I don't think your life is valuable in any way. You have instructed me clearly on what I should think of you. And I think so much less of you that putting you out of my misery would be too much effort and gives you too easy an out from the suffering you deserve, which you will generate for yourself given your worldview. Your bad choices will result in your own torment, and I'm here to watch it with popcorn. That's a skill issue, and the skill is *Using a Brain Effectively*. I have strong feelings, is what I'm saying. At least on this subject. How does that tie back in with **Warhammer 40k** here? It's fairly straightforward. Neither one of these extremes have the ability to imagine anything other than what they perceive to be the world around them, and thus they need every bit of entertainment to adhere and validate that failure of inherent personal capacity. Their position can't be challenged because if it is they actually have to provide an argument or a capable understanding, and that is anathema to accepting their essential premise. When something is inarguable, then you don't learn to defend it, and you resent having to. All this out of less than a full sentence about Wraithbone in an Eldar Codex. Frankly, all I want is for the woke and the pseudo-woke to go away forever and leave us alone. Just stop. Go bother people who deserve your company. Create your own Hell and leave me out of it. Is that asking so much? Really? It's just different flavors of woke when you get down to it. I want to be done with it.