Man, I am feeling wrung out.
The summer is always rough, but this one had been going fine for me, thus far. But this past week we got the ol’ heat + wildfire smoke combo, and I also totally rearranged my apartment last weekend. That left me feeling a bit unsettled, still trying to put stuff away, and figure out if this new way of doing things is actually going to work.
Eye of Terror
I’ve been interested in getting back into Warhammer 40k for a while now. Sort of dipping my toes in, got some models around Christmas, been reading some news sites, following along with all the details about the new edition.
Back when I was a kid, I got into Warhammer somehow or other, I think because an older cousin was into it and told my older brother? Anyway, I used to pore over various army books and codices and issues of White Dwarf, absorbing all kinds of lore, though I never actually played the game. The models were too expensive, and I was no good at building or painting them anyway. I just enjoyed reading all about the game and the lore, of both of the fantasy and scifi sides of things.
Decided to get back into it on a whim, thinking it’d a fun creative outlet to build and paint miniatures, and play the game too why not. There’s a game store pretty close to my apartment that has some nice tables, and people are playing there pretty often. Besides: I actually have some disposable income these days, so it would be possible to get into it more seriously.
Anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying that I figured I ought to read some of the dang books as well. I didn’t do that before, but I realize now it’s because, well… there weren’t any Warhammer 40k novels when I was into it, as a kid. This is the second one ever published, and it’s from 1999! Only the first Gaunt’s Ghosts novel was earlier, along with a handful of Gotrek and Felix novels for Warhammer Fantasy.
This novel, by the delightfully named Barrington J. Bailey, was pretty damn good. It’s no longer “canon”, if such a thing really exists for a shared universe as broad and nebulous as 40k, but that’s not really a huge concern of mine. It has a bit of an odd structure, bouncing between different plotlines in a very episodic way.
There’s a plot involving the imperial navy trying to go into the titular Eye to stop a forthcoming Black Crusade, another about a rogue trader who ends up traveling into it as well, trying to get valuable goods, and finally a pair of Dark Angel space marines, who knew each other during the Horus Heresy and are finally reunited, ten thousand years later.
The last one was the most interesting to me, the way it was all set up was really fun. One of them was a follower of Luther and became a full-on Chaos Space Marine, while the other was left adrift in space after a battle and slowly fell into the Eye after thousands of years. The whole history of the Dark Angels is really interesting, some fun hooks there for fiction.
One of the things I’ve heard over the years is that, in the 40k novels, space marines are portrayed as insanely overpowere basically all the time. Able to take down any threat, from a Tyranid monster to a greater demon, even as humble scouts or common soldiers. But that wasn’t really the case here, must’ve been something that cropped up later.
There’s a kind of conceit with 40k lore where a lot of it is written from the perspective of the Imperium of Man, so it takes on a propagandistic sheen and doesn’t necessarily reflect reality. At least… that was the explanation before, but I think a lot of writers and fans have taken that perspective more as the objective truth, as time has gone on. It’s a strange case of fictional propaganda bleeding into the real world, I suppose.
Anyway, the book was pretty good, I enjoyed reading it. I’ve also got that Necron book that a lot of people love, The Infinite and the Divine, on my pile. I’ll get to that soon enough. Currently I’m devouring the latest Ana & Din novel, I’ll write about that next month.
Network
Went to see this in the theater, as part of national Art House Theater Day. I’d seen it before, of course, but it was really great seeing it with a big crowd. Everything reacting, and not having any distractions going on. Always nice, especially for an older movie like this, lets you really sink into its rhythms.
Anyway: damn this movie fuckin’ rocks, and feels more relevant than ever. Something I really locked into this time is that it is not saying that the old ways were better, that we’re burning the library of Alexandria and this is all a great tragedy. It’s part of an ongoing process that is getting worse, over time. And so, it makes that things are indeed worse, 50 years later!
Like, the local TV news was not a bastion of objective journalism before the ’70s. They had to sell ads, they were chasing viewers, they were pushing spectacle and human interest. It’s just that those things keep getting worse, and other, even more crass and corrupt motives and coming in and taking over more and more.
But really: you could read this as being about modern social media. It’s almost hilariously easy. Howard Beale goes viral, and then his handlers exploit him for everything he’s worth. The scenes of his show after the format change, his big fiery monologues, are incredibly sad. Even when he’s ranting somewhat coherently, it always ends with him having a seizure on stage, while the audience cheers and the camera cranes down to zoom in on his face.
The whole thing about turning everything into TV shows, chasing ratings… this attitude that’s portrayed as being a unique sickness of executives has now been democratized by social media. Everyone sees everything as copy, as content to be posted and used to harvest views and likes and clout and attention. We’re not even chasing money anymore, just human connection and the power to influence others.
We’re all the manifestation of TV, these days. The reflection of the hard calculus of capitalism dominating social spaces, turning them into marketplaces.
And it’s all part of a process that has been going on since long before even this movie. The newspapers of the 19th century weren’t much better. The perverse incentives of capital now warp and destroy everything around us, every day, even the social fabric we exist in!
Phew, been a while since I got an anticapitalist rant into one of these. That felt good.
Grim Dawn
Roudning things out with an old favorite, something I’ve gone back to as a sort of comfort food.
Grim Dawn is a game in the lineage of Diablo 2. The developers also worked on Titan Quest, and it shares a similar skill system, with a bar you feed points into, which unlocks skills, rather than the old trees, where one ability unlocks another. You get to pick two classes, to mix and match abilities.
It has an interesting feel to it. I’ve been playing this game since its earliest release, back when it only had three classes to choose from. It’s improved immeasurably since then, and is a lot more fun to play. It’s very crunchy, lots of stats to read and very granular systems (you have different armor values for every slot you can equip it in!) but you don’t really need to engage with all that from the start.
I suppose it’s kind of the equivalent to Nioh 2, that’s why I liked that game so much. There’s an insane depth of potential for builds, but also you can kinda skate through things if you want.
Take my current character, for insance. I picked the new berserker class and the old occultist, going for a sort of pet build that stacks a bunch of buffs and spreads them around. I started off using the werewofl, but switched to wereraven since I realized it fits better with that build. I care about increasing cold damage, and general damage resistance. So I set up my loot filters to only show things that help with that. I see tons of equipment dropping from enemies all the time, but I can safely ignore almost all of it. Doesn’t even show up as something to interact with!
Cold and pets, that’s the name of the game. I just keep those in mind, and it’s easy to pick what I should keep or toss. It even simplifies the intimidating constellation system, you can search a term and see all the nodes highlighted that you want to aim for.
I’ll probably run out of steam before I finish the higher difficulties, but that’s fine. This is just bridging a gap. It’s comfort food! Running around murdering dozens and eldritch monsters and giant bugs and skeletons and whatnot. This game really gives you that stark feeling of like… oh, yeah, I’m murdering like hundreds of living things as I run around the world, huh. That is a particular form of fantasy. But hey, I’m not immune to it.
Alright, gonna keep it short this month. I’ve got some other things I want to write about… but I’m not done with ’em yet. The new Ana & Din book, the rest of Return of the King, a couple new anime series, and so on. I’m only just starting to feel “normal” again, since I got my AC set back up, haha.
Until next time, shipmates!
The Beige Moth 