Juho Pohjalainen's Blog: Pankarp - Posts Tagged "grimdark"

Warhammer 40,000 is one of the most relentlessly bleak and horrific fictional settings ever imagined. It's an endless war that dominates the entire galaxy, and has virtually every life revolving around it one way or the other. Even the afterlife was corrupted by it, many millions of years ago, completely beyond repair: the spiral into final death and darkness cannot be stopped or slowed down, and in the end they're all doomed.



This often raises a question: why then should you care? If everybody is doomed anyway, what's the point? The usual answer - it's the people, the individuals. The few precious lives whom you can save, or protect, or destroy. They're in peril, and you're in position to help. And if you do, they may live the remainder of their natural lives in relative happiness and peace and comfort. And that's something you should always cherish, and always fight for. You can't solve the grand underlying problems of the world - no one can - but you can do your share to help somebody. Every life is precious.

So now my mind drifts on: what about the opposite?

My own setting is as bright and hopeful as I can make it - a golden age of high adventure where I myself would not mind living. If a grimdark setting is a bleak reflection of our world and a reminder that things can always be better, then I guess a noblebright one is more of escapism and wish fulfillment with perhaps a dash of hope for a better future. In the former case you can't do anything to make things better in the grand scheme of things; in the latter, you don't really need to.



But we're still not looking for any sweeping great reforms: we're looking at the little folks. And because nothing can ever be perfect - especially not mankind with our flaws and sins - they're still menaced and victimized, their lives and livelihoods in danger. The reader still feels their plight, and once the hero has come around to save them, their gratitude.

I guess the takeaway here is that the setting doesn't really have too much of a relevance, in the grand scheme of things. It's big and imposing and scary, but it's the little things you want to focus on. Maybe that's no big news to anyone here, but then again... lately, Warhammer's been pulling the lens back and covering the entire setting, bringing forth grand changes and raising the stakes. Things are coming to a head. It feels like it might be End Times all over again.

And I'm really not a fan. The older I get, the tougher time I have getting into these vast, galaxy-wide conflicts. They feel... hollow.

But I also understand that Games Workshop needs to sell more models.