eldargal
05-18-2012, 08:17 AM
Gav Thorpe just posted a rather good article, Elf Preservation part two (http://mechanicalhamster.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/elf-preservation-part-two/), on his blog (http://mechanicalhamster.wordpress.com/). It talks about the evolution of fantasy as a genre and the tropes and such things, and has a rather good passage on Warhammer:
Warhammer has its cake and eats it. It has orcs and dwarfs and elves, and treemen and dragons and goblins, and daemons and vampires and giants and barbarians and sorcerers and necromancers and yes, even Halflings and dark lords. By the nature of its original purpose and slow evolution, Warhammer is chock full of pretty much every traditional and not-so-traditional fantasy trope one could throw at a world.
And it also has realism. It is gritty and dark, with themes of power and ambition (the lure of Chaos) as well as a blurred sense of good and evil. Heroes abound, of both the knightly charging-about-slaying-dragons variety and the more modern flexible-morality-fighting-to-survive kind. It has villains of equal diversity. And it does this with depth, humour and a very British sensibility. It is both High and Low fantasy, of epic battles and desperate sewer struggles.
For those not initiated into the fandom, Warhammer seems nothing more than a derivative mish-mash of ideas thrown together to sell some toy soldiers. That is, after all, how it started, blending fantasy and historical at a time when that was not the vogue. Yet it has become much more, and its success makes the novels far more than simple tie-in pulp for Games Workshop. That success has gone beyond the bounds of gamers to create a readership amongst the fantasy-buying public. What some see as reason for denigration is in fact the great strength and appeal of the setting and the stories. It is with Warhammer that fantasy fans can find all the dwarfs, orcs and elves they can handle, while the ‘mainstream’ lets loose another faux-medieval landscape populated by backstabbing *******s and conniving princesses who would sell a dragon quicker than fall in love with it.
I get to write Warhammer novels, and I am proud to do so. It draws on all of that literary pedigree I’ve just buzzed through, as well as the vastness of real world history. Traditional fantasy may not be quite what it was thirty years ago, but it has not died out. It just has a different name.
I thought it was a pretty good insight into Warhammer, and the rest of the article is well worth reading, go read it now!
Warhammer has its cake and eats it. It has orcs and dwarfs and elves, and treemen and dragons and goblins, and daemons and vampires and giants and barbarians and sorcerers and necromancers and yes, even Halflings and dark lords. By the nature of its original purpose and slow evolution, Warhammer is chock full of pretty much every traditional and not-so-traditional fantasy trope one could throw at a world.
And it also has realism. It is gritty and dark, with themes of power and ambition (the lure of Chaos) as well as a blurred sense of good and evil. Heroes abound, of both the knightly charging-about-slaying-dragons variety and the more modern flexible-morality-fighting-to-survive kind. It has villains of equal diversity. And it does this with depth, humour and a very British sensibility. It is both High and Low fantasy, of epic battles and desperate sewer struggles.
For those not initiated into the fandom, Warhammer seems nothing more than a derivative mish-mash of ideas thrown together to sell some toy soldiers. That is, after all, how it started, blending fantasy and historical at a time when that was not the vogue. Yet it has become much more, and its success makes the novels far more than simple tie-in pulp for Games Workshop. That success has gone beyond the bounds of gamers to create a readership amongst the fantasy-buying public. What some see as reason for denigration is in fact the great strength and appeal of the setting and the stories. It is with Warhammer that fantasy fans can find all the dwarfs, orcs and elves they can handle, while the ‘mainstream’ lets loose another faux-medieval landscape populated by backstabbing *******s and conniving princesses who would sell a dragon quicker than fall in love with it.
I get to write Warhammer novels, and I am proud to do so. It draws on all of that literary pedigree I’ve just buzzed through, as well as the vastness of real world history. Traditional fantasy may not be quite what it was thirty years ago, but it has not died out. It just has a different name.
I thought it was a pretty good insight into Warhammer, and the rest of the article is well worth reading, go read it now!