THE GREAT MOCKERY, PART 2

Hello all!

When last we left the start of our story, I had an existential crisis regarding this whole stupid endeavor. It had helpful insights. To recap:

1) I am criticizing a gaming franchise whose owner is notoriously secretive and lawsuit-happy.

2) I am using a lot of dumb jokes and false names to cover my butt, just in case.

3) I gave a broad but shallow smattering of history of said franchise and how creativity is involved.

4) My main beef with the whole thing is—a lot of things, but mostly it entertains darkness.

As a reminder, you’re going to need to crack open a wikiped-page to get the names and places.

Codes Used so Far:

‘James Morkshop’ or JM (and no James you did not copyright Mork from Mork and Mindy!)

‘Battles of Fantastical Nature involving Hammers used for Warfare’ [BFNHW]

‘Hammers 40.0’ or H-40.0—you know, the knock-off variety of WD-40.

In addition, you will likely need a webpage opened, a fan-made wiki. Search ‘hammers’, ’40,000’, and Lexicanum. That’s a fan-made wiki that has all the proper names, because I can’t bother to remember. It’s a good place to, well, lose yourself and get an idea of the setting without being too overwhelmed by it.

I’m not here to sell you to the franchise. I’ll give credit where credit is due, because there is a twisted genius to it all. That’s it. Now, I am NOT going to say ‘This setting is DUMB and here’s why’ or ‘I’m going to defeat it with facts and logic.’ Neither will work because, for H-40.0 specifically, it revels in its madness and it will beat you to death with whatever facts and logic you try and throw at it. There is probably a gun in the setting that shoots facts and logic as weaponized bullets but there’s only one copy of it and the technology is revocably lost to—anyway!

H-40.0 entertains darkness, and is a creativity drain. Yeah, all you older veterans of the setting, you heard me right, it’s a creativity drain. Don’t lie! It can only be creative in terms of itself. H-40.0 doesn’t like making new things, but doesn’t mind slowly adapting other things into its setting with its own dark spin. That is what gave it staying power for so long, on its end. Fanbase is on the other end.

…Gah, where to start with this hare-brained story? Hmm. Okay, genre conventions first, then in-setting cosmology.

Genre-wise, H-40.0 is a high fantasy setting with a sci-fi coat of paint. Not my words but the words of a devoted fan who’s older than me. Call him Mr. Salesman. You can pass off H-40.0 as ‘science fantasy’ but it’s too bastardized to really be classed as that. What’s the difference between sci-fi and fantasy? The former is ‘the improbable made possible’ and the latter is ‘the impossible made probable’. Science fantasy is a fantasy that wears ‘science’ as a gross skin-suit. It, it really is more an aesthetic choice, I want to say, unless the cosmology (a fantasy element) is really fleshed out.

In addition, H-40.0 is a deconstruction of old sci-fi tropes as well as ‘Battles of Fantastical Nature involving Hammers used for Warfare IN SPACE’. The old sci-fi tropes are the really old tropes, from the 60s and 70s era. Think of Frank Herbert’s Dune and R. A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers; giant space empires and high-tech soldiers in super armor duking it out with alien monsters. Big, easy Themes that you can grasp immediately without nuance. …Now that I think of it, H-40.0 does not parody Star Trek. Weird. Or Star Wars for that matter—but it may be because those last two are franchises that can slap James Morkshop around with lawsuits and possibly win.

The biggest deconstruction in H-40.0 is the deconstruction of Enlightenment Sci-Fi. Everywhere you turn, H-40.0 goes out of its way to spit on the notions of Enlightenment ‘Progress’. (And note that sci-fi, on both sides of the Atlantic, was heavily influenced by Enlightenment values from 1900 to the 1960/70s, or from HG Wells up to Gene Roddenberry of Star Trek.) There is no super- material/metal that solves all human problems. No technology will save mankind, but will doom it. Humans will not be inherently rational, nor will any aliens be inherently rational. Attempts to work towards a ‘better tomorrow’ fail, in a spectacular explosion, or SPACE DEMONS will possess your computers and make and eat you!

Believe it or not—and older fans, get ready to have a heart attack— H-40.0 is Enlightenment Rationalism gone insane. Nothing exists unless it is proven. Life well and truly does come from nothing. Most thoughts are just constructs of biology. Most of ‘magic’ or ‘space magic’ is just bizarre exotic energy—and the magic that can’t be understood or controlled is just Space Cthulhu. There are no mysteries*, only unknowns and ambiguities. There are no gods, only constructs of thought.

[*Though, let’s face it, the mysteries—that which is beyond sight and speech—of H-40.0 are fates worse than death. It’s a fault of the cosmology.]

And then H-40.0 turns around and spews out the upside-down versions of those Rational points: Yes! The gods ARE real! And they want your soul! There are mysteries, and they are soul-destroying! Your biology is a conduit for your thoughts, and your thoughts can corrupt, mutate your body, just by thinking evil thoughts. Everything everywhere does and does not exist! We only have mostly-defined certainties that are gross and fuzzy around the edges. Hell’s Bells, there’s even a human character—the, uh, ‘Gawd-Emprah of Mankind’, who is basically the God of Human Rationality. Yes, older fans, look me in the eye and tell me that he’s NOT a God of Human Reason.

That can be H-40.0 in a gross nutshell. One of them…Anyway, it praises and mocks a given thing/Theme/trope at the same time. That is because, above all, H-40.0 is a satire. A satire cannot exist without having an objective set of rules. If there are no rules, then a satire cannot take two unlike things and exaggerate the differences for comedic effects. Or, if there are no rules, the satire cannot point out any hypocrisy regarding those rules. H-40.0 is a satire that…lost the plot? No, actually, H-40.0 is a satire that takes itself too seriously and does not know when to admit the joke.

What are some of the points that H-40.0 satirizes initially? If a utopia is made, by progress, tech, order, and extended long-life, the people in that utopia will become bored to the point of insanity; and then those bored people turn to space-BDSM to feel alive, and then they won’t know when to stop, and then (somehow) the collective BDSM of an entire species births out a cosmic demon-god of hellish pleasure! …We’ll get to that later.

Or, the overreliance on robots will, first, make humans stupid and lazy. In fact, overreliance on any problem-solving technology will eventually cripple humanity, because humans won’t learn the skills needed to maintain their machines. The machines take care of the machines! Then the machines become smart, and start a galaxy-wide war against their human masters, and the humans barely win, but are reduced to space-Feudalism (complete with knights and lasers) because of the catastrophe. (This is Herbert’s Dune universe in a nutshell.)

Or, a species cursed with a short lifespan, but great intelligence, asks a group of god-like space-frogs to cure their short life; they refuse. So then the short-lived species turns to a group of star-vampires to take revenge on the space-frogs, and then the star-vampires trick the cursed species to give up their souls to win the war, and then the cursed-species-turned-Robots realize that they were tricked and then take revenge on the star-vampires…okay, I don’t know what the satire was in this instance.

H-40.0 is a deliberate, upside-down lampooning of heroism. Like many stories written by demented geniuses, it asks serious questions, but the intent behind those serious questions are insincere. Faith and Heroism are two main areas of focus for H-40.0. Again, deconstruction is applied to those two Themes. What separates faith from fanaticism, if there’s a difference at all? Why praise heroes when they’re violent killers? The famous poster-boys of H-40.0 (and you’ll know who I’m talking about, they’re 8ft tall with shoulder-pauldrons that are 2ft tall; usually they are bright blue) were, in the 1st ed. of H-40.0, violent criminals. They were humanity’s premier warriors in a brutal, insane galaxy because said warriors were the most insane and brutal fighters! That changed a lot over time for promotional reasons.

See, however it came about, a central conceit of H-40.0 is ‘nobody is the good guy; there is only different shades of grey and black’. For this conceit to really work, the traditional virtues (like justice/fortitude/temperance/prudence and faith/hope/love) either have to be deformed, or deliberately misunderstood, or just, not exist! For example, H-40.0 has been compared to being a space opera* with no romance. H-40.0 understands this, because if love and romance were actualities in the setting, the whole damned galaxy would fall apart from the power of love.

[*Star Wars is a space opera, which always includes warfare and romance. Or, War & Peace, if you ever bother to read it.]

Now, what does this do, then? Make a setting where nobody is in the right; there are only parties who are interested in their own survival? Where the virtues are suspicious, because, too often, they are misguided? For example, H-40.0 understands the power of Faith, of putting your trust, hope, and fighting spirit in something higher; but H-40.0 will also undercut Faith by saying ‘you can put your Faith in untrustworthy or stupid things’ or ‘humans are morons and will c*ck up the tenants of their own Faith out of fanaticism or self-interest’. All these things are true. But what is missing? The implication of this is that there are no inherently ‘good’ things to put your Faith in. Just, put your Faith in whatever works for you and helps you survive/achieve your goals. Expand it out—

Heroism is treated in a similar vein. What makes a hero? H-40.0 plays with this too. Obviously, a hero has to be violent killer, or he’s no good at all when the space-monsters come crashing through. But suppose a hero vs. hero conflict? Who’s in the right? One hero is, sure, a skilled killer, but he dearly loves his people and country. But, so does the opposing hero. Both heroes are fighting and killing for the good and survival of their respective peoples. Both heroes understand honor. Yet, though both heroes are honorable to each other, they are still mortal enemies, and the destruction of one side is assured.

…And then H-40.0 barfs on its own feet. Hmm? What? Your silly, misplaced Faith? Yes! You need it! You absolutely need it, to shoot faith-bullets at the army of SPACE DEMONS that are invading your planet, to eat your soul-babies! Hmm? What? Honorable heroes on opposite sides, doomed to slay each other? No time for that now, they have to team up to fight a giant horde of alien space-bugs that are eating the planet they’re fighting over. All those silly differences don’t matter… It never ends! There is this constant building up, and tearing down, of singing (shallow) praises while mercilessly chipping away at any character faults, flaws, and shortcomings. H-40.0 is exhausting in how much it cycles through praise and mockery. A constant build up, and a constant tear-down, in a semi-permanent stasis…(I’ll get to that later.)

You can imagine it like this pattern. In a traditional story, a mature one, it recognizes that heroism and other virtues can go terribly wrong. A shining knight isn’t perfect, but he strives to be, and his story can cover how his quest for chivalry can go badly, if he acts badly. H-40.0 starts from the opposite pattern: Assume that everyone is a mean-spirited doofus who acts for the wrong reasons, and occasionally, maybe, once in a blue moon, every other century, they begrudgingly ‘do the right thing’. Well, at minimum. H-40.0 prefers anti-heroes with disturbing character traits.

Teenaged melodrama! That’s the word I’m going for. H-40.0 has been described, by I fan I talked to, as a setting for people who are teenagers at heart (call this fan Mr. Costs). Mr. Costs meant that more than literally. He struck me as a wise fellow, for he’s an Elder Nerd. (Elder Nerds are delights.) Mr. Costs meant ‘teenagers at heart’ in the sense that those fans still have the wild creativity of youth, but advanced to the next phase. It is a creativity that (up to a point) engages with difficulty—a creativity that engages with the difficult. It plays with dark, morbid, dangerous themes as a way of deepening understanding. It is a creativity that searches for hard answers to the hard questions. It’s just like a healthy growing up for normal teens.

Then that’s where it goes (space) tits up. It’s not just that H-40.0 attracts the ‘teens at heart’, it’s that it stops people from growing up past the teen years. Now, I get it. H-40.0 is a game and entertainment setting, it was not meant to be a teaching tool. On a good day, it lampoons tropes and other silly things. You can even do the reverse and take something, from another franchise, and put it in the setting; H-40.0 will find a way to give it a stylistic, ‘grimdark’ makeover*. I’ll go on a limb and congratulate it for its unique twist. By saying that ‘there is no right and wrong, only different perspectives’, it does let you explore the quirky thought processes that underlie motivations. In the above examples, it does let you understand the doomed, honor-bound heroes’ motivations, or why a ‘dumb’ religious fanatic acts the way they do (because it is all they’ve ever known). Though these are the simple examples; H-40.0 does the same perspective trick to get you to understand the motives of the real freaks and monsters of the setting.

[*And then have something horrible happen to it, as a hazing ritual. Everyone is equally miserable and weird in the setting. No, wait, multiple awful things happening to it!]

The perspective trick doesn’t lead to anything good. Game of Thrones and Dune do the same thing. Don’t be fooled by the first Dune book, in the later books Paul and his family keep doing more and more dubious plots to, not only maintain power, but to influence the overall destiny of mankind. Game of Thrones (the books) is the same—GRR Martin makes a no-judgement stance on all his characters, no matter who they are. In effect, all motivations are valid. Okay, sure, this perspective trick is ‘supposed to’ get us readers to understand that our own motivations make sense to us, all the time. Sure. That our reasons are always valid in our own eyes. Sure…And it fails to remind us that we want the wrong things, no? Things which destroy us? That deny life and promote death?

It’s a very dangerous thing to say ‘there’s no Right and Wrong, only Perspectives and Motives’ (or, NRWOPM). NRWOPM does not turn the world, the game, into one of brute, animal survival. That view may include materialism, but it is a step above it. NRWOPM turns the world into a game of fulfilling desires. What the hell is a desire? Uh, well, it could be a product of gross biology. Anything more complicated than that, and you need to talk to ‘Ologies* for answers.

[*Philosophy, Theology, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Cosmology, etc.]

Ehh, I suppose we can go over the cosmology now, which applies about the same to both H-40.0 and BFNHW. Of the two, H-40.0 is the worse one, because in BFNHW, there are at least semi-respectable, pagan-style gods who oppose the demon-gods. In H-40.0, there are only demon-gods, and a handful of god-like beings who aren’t true divinities but are powerful enough to thwart the plots of the demon-gods*.

[*Yeah, I know, older veterans, that’s not the whole story. We’ll split hairs later.]

In H-40.0, there are two dimensions, the Material and the…uh…what wasn’t copyrighted—hot-damn, it has how many names? Okay, we’ll call it the Material dimension and the Wyrd (‘weird’) dimension. The Material dimension is our own; it follows all the rules and physics and science and such like ours. Unlike ours, the Material dimension follows sci-fi/Enlightenment tropes, where technology, progress, and rationality have no upper limit. For example, in H-40.0 humanity didn’t need help from aliens to make their most advanced technologies, which included teleportation and energy-to-matter converters (aka, Star Trek replicators). All humans need to research and have knowledge of everything, is enough time to do it. But, in addition, there are, in the Material dimension, exotic energy beings that eat stars, and enigmatic beings (the space-frogs) that have such absolute mastery over scientific knowledge that they can but think of something and it exists (or, they can make a wish and use science to make it come true).

Physical, biological life exists normally, and, uh, abnormally in some cases (gotta have those freaky aliens). Intelligence is a luck of the draw; it can come into being on its own, or be bestowed by a supreme creator race (see the space-frogs). Even then, intelligence isn’t necessarily a whole package—some aliens in H-40.0 are really just intelligent animals who are so good at copying sapience that they appear as rational actors, when in truth they are merely excellent mimics. There are some aliens, we are asked to believe, who are (somehow) intelligent enough to create advanced cybernetics, starships, and nuclear reactors, but possess no art, culture, or any real language. They are more like meat-robots with a carnivorous bent.

[Now, my view of the weird intelligences of H-40.0 is that they are playing around with ‘what makes an intelligent being?’, or they really don’t care and just want to make bizarro monsters without considering the implications.]

Okay, so the Material dimension has a number of sci-fi tropes and goofiness to go along. The Wyrd dimension is where things become characteristically H-40.0. See, the Wyrd dimension is not necessarily the ‘supernatural’* counterpart to the Material. A lot of supernatural things happen in and come from the Wyrd dimension; it is and is not supposed to be ‘magic’. As its own dimension, the Wyrd does have its own forms of pseudo-supernatural life. It overlaps, like a shadow, to the Material dimension. The Wyrd dimension does not follow the same rules for time and space. Plenty of freaky, dumb stuff happens there of its own accord.

[*I’m being pedantic here, because ‘supernatural’ IRL means ‘that which is above nature’. Supernatural does not mean magic. The supernatural is so ‘high’ above nature that it can’t be manipulated by the natural or magic. The Wyrd dimension is—not that at all.]

The two dimensions overlap like shadows, and they can produce change upon each other. The Material influences the Wyrd and vice-versa. The power, the raw potential energy of the Wyrd dimension can be channeled—by technology, magic, or both—to produce effects in the Material, from explosions to psychic powers to Faster-than-Light space ships. In effect, ‘space magic’, which can affect souls and the mind, as well as physics and non-living matter. If you aren’t careful, you can also tear open holes to the Wyrd dimension and let its native life run rampant. (Some of that rampant life includes brain-eating wasps the size of dogs, and cow-sized octopi that can mind-control whole planets. Not things you want!)

The Material influences the Wyrd. In H-40.0 especially, the thoughts of sentient, thinking races affect the energies and life-forms of the Wyrd. This, is where the setting goes to hell, because hell already exists in the hearts and minds of thinking creatures. Those SPACE DEMONS that I joked about? Not jokes. Due to the misery of the Material species, Space Demons are literally born from the nightmares and wicked desires of mortals. They get a body from the energies of the Wyrd dimension, and, because they’re—you know, made of evil desires, they prey on each other, but especially prey on Material mortals.

You can call this the Revenge of Idealism. Well, I’ll have to wrap it up soon, but briefly, Idealism (from Plato) says that there is a Dimension of Ideas, perfect forms that give shape to the material things around us. It is the essence of the Ideals that make physical matter. Then, around the time of the Existentialists (from Kirkegaard to Nietszche to the Frenchman, Jean-Paul Sarte, ugh!), an upside-down rationality says the opposite: That the ‘ideals’ are made up by humans, for whatever reason. ‘Ideals’ don’t exist unless humans say so.

This is Existential Idealism—(the physical) existence precedes essence (of the Ideals), and then the essence comes back to re-influence existence—for its own personal goals!

That’s enough for today.

More to follow!